Wood Hoarding

[Mike Nolan]

I don't know how many times I have dug a piece of wood out of the trash basket that is just what I now need. Perhaps because I recently handled it.

[Frank Pratt]

I have the added disability of generally making something from the lowest quality piece I can find that still meets my needs. So I not only accumulate lumber, I accumulate really nice lumber that in my mind I'm "saving" for a project special enough to use it, but it never arrives. I know it's wrong thinking, don't bother to respond telling me so.

I'm not much of a hoarder, but I completely understand you cause I have the same tendency to save the best stuff for some special future project that never materializes.

[Mike Cutler]

I'm not only a wood hoarder (having a sawmill in the family is a pre-disposing condition) but I have the added disability of generally making something from the lowest quality piece I can find that still meets my needs. So I not only accumulate lumber, I accumulate really nice lumber that in my mind I'm "saving" for a project special enough to use it, but it never arrives. I know it's wrong thinking, don't bother to respond telling me so. My parents are Depression babies.

If any woodworkers show up at my estate auction (hopefully not soon), they're going to go home happy. I just know the cream of my woodworking lifetime will go into a pile and be sold for a song. "All for one money, who will give me $10 for this pile of dusty old lumber, looks like it's been lying around for decades. . ."

You Too!!!

If anyone finds out I kicked it, you want the board being used as a shelf over my work bench. It's 4/4, 11' long, 17" wide, Birdeye Movinque. I've never seen another like it.It would make a killer acoustic guitar body. Don't know how well it would sound, but man would it be pretty!!
Pay no attention to the "dunnage" bracing a chainfall in the rafters. If you're a rosewood fan, well,,,,,,,,,
Oh, and someone please grab the nasty looking "shorts" "holding down the work bench". Gotta be 500lbs. of cocobolo there.

[Jim Becker]

I don't know how many times I have dug a piece of wood out of the trash basket that is just what I now need. Perhaps because I recently handled it.

That's the absolute truth and the nature of the conundrum...keep the stuff around and it piles up to the point it's hard to manager or not have "that one piece" that would have made a difference.

[Pete Staehling]

I keep a lot of small, medium, and large wood pieces and some might call it hoarding, but I don't think I keep much that doesn't actually make sense. A lot of what I "hoard" is in the category of actually being considered special enough that I don't want to waste it until that "just right" project for it comes along. There are those pieces that are not so special but are just okay and just waiting for a use that they will work for. Sure, there are a few pieces that are really just junk, but they tend to wind up in the fireplace over the winter if they don't get used for making jigs or stakes in the garden or something so they get weeded out with some frequency.

I guess the closest thing I do to hoarding is when I consider something so special that I won't use it. I used to do that a lot especially after I paid a stupidly high price for some beautiful curly english walnut. It sat around forever. Since then I have found more and more really special wood at not so crazy prices I have gotten over that bad habit of not using really nice lumber.

I have since bought equally nice or nicer lumber for prices that were 10-20% the price I paid for that piece. Also I realized that in my work the wood is actually a fairly small percentage of the final cost of the product even when I overpaid for it when you factor in my time, overhead, and so on. So I started just using it, sparingly maybe, and only for nicer projects, but without too much hesitation. I might charge a bit more for the end product. How much more might have more to do with how scarce I consider the wood than with what I paid for it. If it was free, I have only one little piece, and am likely to never see another one like it, I remind myself that it is more valuable than something i overpaid for, but can find again possibly at a better price next time (or maybe not).