Thread: Time to confess!!!!

It might come in useful though.
I have a bucket or two for kindling, a scrap box next to the bench where off cuts tend to go in and not much comes out.
The big problem I have are all the bits in the garage starting to take up car space. All the shelf and panel off cuts which might be useful. Lengths of timber where the off cut might be 590, but the job requires 610 and on it goes.
The day after I have a big clean up I will probably wish I had kept a piece or two.
I do have the odd job where I do use the off cuts, and I have a bag for off cuts to light the fire in a boiler. Treated pine off cuts go in the rubbish bin.

I will try harder not to accumulate off cuts, I promise.

I constantly give away mine to my neighbours as firewood. I keep a bucket full of them and I DO use them all the time.

Sometimes it is tempting to want to keep all of them but you just need to be realistic about it.

I must confess to being an anal retentive bower bird. That means I am in big strife if you hadn't guessed.

I am making some new storage and will have a BIG cleanup as I re position everything.

I have lots of old hand tools that I inherited from my father. Yesterday I passed them on to my grandson who has just started an apprenticeship as a cabinet maker.

Guilty as charged

Intervention.
I think I need to come and take away those temptation to keep pieces....

I have years of conditioning to not make usable offcuts in the first place, they cost money and create a strorage headache. however, there is always some offcuts so....I keep my offcuts on the panel saw table. on the 1200mm wide rip fence table which rarely gets used. I fill it up and use what i need from that. mostly it will be ~1000 x random width x 25mm strips, or less than 300mm long pieces of 6x1". I know i have filled the table to capacity when old offcuts fall to the floor as i add new ones (i destroyed a saw blade doing this because the table was also home to my spare blade, luckily it only cost me 20bux). At this time i pick the smaller stuff and chuck it in the bin. it seems to be working well.

a good usuable offcut is an offcut which GETS USED! otherwise its just another dust collector which has no real monetary value even though it actually cost you money

Find yourself a small object carver or whittler. I have a lady who comes and collects whatever she can get in solid timber. She goes quite weak at the knees over exotics.

Not what woodworkers want to hear, but i am quite the opposite these days, I have an addiction to milling, and with more than my needs can consume I have resorted to cutting up slabs, blanks and boards into firewood, such a shame, but a wood heater is our only warmth, so this winter I have been keeping warm with blackwood, silkyoak, chestnut and others
Before anyone says "sell the timber and buy fire wood" been there tried that, I would be freezing about now.

I had a big bin of scraps but all it did was collect more scraps, some got used but the collection always increased. I got rid of the lot and gave the bin away so it would not happen again and whenever I finish a job now the left overs either get burnt or thrown out straight away. I also had a rack for longer bits so I emptied it, burnt the rack and don't miss not having it.

Deep down in my heart of hearts I know that I shouldn't keep all those offcuts. I know they should be dispatched straight into the bin otherwise the stack will just keep growing. I know that you all you neat freaks have given good advice .........

But I just can't bring myself to do it.

Originally Posted by Evanism

Its time to PURGE!!!!! Its going into the fire bin!!!!

I thought you would have said "Its GONE into the fire bin!!!!"

Have you followed through?

Guilty x 3 me with wood and metal LOML with fibre, remnant scraps. this last 12 months has been a cull process only buy if its required specific to a project. Otherwise use whats on hand. I have 5 or 4 boxes of off cuts a few long bits yes ply mdf off cuts just in case for what ever.

Metal well brass and Ali even swarf for possible use in wood projects, steel off cuts almost to washer size.

Yeah I'm also guilty of the odd off cut,
I keep them for a while and eventually I get rid of bits and pieces. I often wonder why I kept them in the first place, and then the cycle start all over again.