How do people store their scrap? do you keeps some of it, all of it? expensive wood and cheap wood? is there a storage solution available - bin, shelf, box? drowning in it.
I keep all of it - in fact, one of my lumber sources was the scrap bin at the local university's wood shop.
I have multiple storage options. wall mounted lumber racks, clear plastic shoe boxes ($1 each) filled with similar size/species scrap pieces on a wall mounted shelf, Two more wall mounted shelves with long skinny pieces, and I just built a rolling scrap sorter bin to hold plywood scraps.
I asked this question once and it was pointed out to me that if you are keeping it, its not scrap but rather cut-offs.
Regardless of what you call it, I keep the furniture grade woods - cherry, maple, walnut, and give the pine cutoffs to my daughter & S-I-L for their fire pit.
Made my daughter a pine TV cabinet, used cherry cutoffs for pegs, door knobs & latches. With my box full of cherry, just made my grandson a display rack for his baseball card collection.
So to answer your question, I keep the hard woods, some in boxes, some in a lidded Rubbermaid garbage can & my garden shed is half full of cherry & maple boards left over from projects.
I store mine in cutting board form, I just throw everything into a small wooden crate, once it is close to full I make several cutting boards from it. And scrap from cutting board production is now too small to be useful and gets tossed in a small cardboard box for later burning. Pine cut-offs just get tossed.
I built a 4'x3' wood storage cart. 1'x4' shelf in the middle for Misc stuff, 1×4 front for vertical storage of lumber, and 1×4 back for sheet goods. On top of the shelf I have 4 or 5 those big sam's club laundry soap buckets for smaller stuff, divided by type(smaller sheets, tiny sticks, larger sticks, Misc stuff like dowels,...)
I found that I collected everything but rarely used scraps. Now I toss scraps into the bucket or storage section. If it's full I toss any new scraps in the trash. With this system I have scraps when I need them but at the same time I'm not overwhelmed by them.
Of the stuff destined for trash I set aside whatever is burnable for my dad.
A barrel is where my stuff is kept. I keep all scraps from what ever project I am working on in a 3 1/2 gallon bucket then when done I sort and put what I want to keep in the barrel. You never now when a mistake can be fixed with a scrap piece from the same project.
For woods like walnut, cherry, mahogany, I keep all my scraps and cut offs for things like making drawer pulls, knobs that sort of thing. Pine scraps are used for fireplace kindling, oak scraps are used for smoking meats.
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