I spend my saturdays working at a woodcraft store in Northern Virginia. We get lots of customers that are looking to play with new tools, see what the latest offerings and sales are, and in some cases, here to purchase tools and take them to their new home. In their new home I am sure they get put to use as well as most (sadly, not all) tools do in my shop. They are used to cut over sized lumber to more manageable lengths and widths - cut out defects that we can't make into an artistic statement - and to incorrectly prepare some pieces for a project. Hey, it happens. All this work generates extra wood we generically refer to as cut-offs. I think that's a nice name for "wood that we no longer want to deal with".
In my neck of the woods, living in a home without a wood burning fireplace or stove, that means that this wood just piles up and gets in the way of doing more fun things. In the past, I could give it to folks that would use it in their fire places, but for some reason that option has just not been regular. I can haul it out to the back of the property to put it in my "compost heap" (that's a euphemism for the wood scrap graveyard) - or I can use up valuable storage space in the shop to save it for another project. Sadly, these pieces parts are never going to find a home in another project. Well, ok, maybe one or two do, but mostly they just sit there for years.
As I said, I work at a woodcraft store, and I usually just bring home more stuff that needs a new home, and that makes more wood scraps. One day, a customer arrived at the store - he had just come from the local landfill, dropping off stuff to make room for the new piece of equipment he purchased. Among the items was a 55 gallon drum, that the landfill would not accept. He wanted to know if he could use our dumpster to drop the drum. I saw the opportunity and took the drum home.
When I was young (and dinosaurs ruled the earth) 55 drums were used as burn barrels, basically just a place to create a controlled place for burning. I took my new treasure home, and much to the chagrin of my wife, set it up in the back yard on some bricks. I drilled holes around the base to allow air flow, and now use it to dispose of my cutoffs.
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Another use of the extras in my shop is the residue collected in the "pre-collector" on my dust collector. I use the material that is gathered there (mostly in the activity of running the power jointer and planer) plus the shavings generated from hand tool school practice :) to supplement mulching.
.JPG)
In my neck of the woods, living in a home without a wood burning fireplace or stove, that means that this wood just piles up and gets in the way of doing more fun things. In the past, I could give it to folks that would use it in their fire places, but for some reason that option has just not been regular. I can haul it out to the back of the property to put it in my "compost heap" (that's a euphemism for the wood scrap graveyard) - or I can use up valuable storage space in the shop to save it for another project. Sadly, these pieces parts are never going to find a home in another project. Well, ok, maybe one or two do, but mostly they just sit there for years.
As I said, I work at a woodcraft store, and I usually just bring home more stuff that needs a new home, and that makes more wood scraps. One day, a customer arrived at the store - he had just come from the local landfill, dropping off stuff to make room for the new piece of equipment he purchased. Among the items was a 55 gallon drum, that the landfill would not accept. He wanted to know if he could use our dumpster to drop the drum. I saw the opportunity and took the drum home.
When I was young (and dinosaurs ruled the earth) 55 drums were used as burn barrels, basically just a place to create a controlled place for burning. I took my new treasure home, and much to the chagrin of my wife, set it up in the back yard on some bricks. I drilled holes around the base to allow air flow, and now use it to dispose of my cutoffs.
.JPG)
Another use of the extras in my shop is the residue collected in the "pre-collector" on my dust collector. I use the material that is gathered there (mostly in the activity of running the power jointer and planer) plus the shavings generated from hand tool school practice :) to supplement mulching.
.JPG)
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