Time to confess!!!!

[Evanism]

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

Have you followed through?

No

But I did move it all to the front of the studio (ok, shed) ready for taking to the nature strip. It all gets heisted within minutes by passers by.

[Fuzzie]

I have a 'shorts' storage area (read scrap bin) and a scrap-scrap pile under the bandsaw that I can't get to. I just bagged up the scrap-scrap pile in 3 old pool salt bags after my last project and left it on the nature strip marked free fire wood. Somebody was probably unknowingly burning Maple Silkwood that night.

[Mobyturns]

I think it is inbred in our generations, to make use of everything that is "useful." We only have a problem in finding projects to make these "useful one day bits" into useful items. Savy?

[Chesand]

I had to clean out my father-in-law's garage when he was moving and found bucket loads of scraps and off-cuts - some as short as 100 to 15mm. I vowed and declared then that I would only keep pieces more than 300mm long. The only exception to that is if the offcuts are suitable for pen blanks which I then hand on.
I have a cardboard box on the floor near the doorway and all scraps go into that. When it is full off it goes to my son who has an open fire

[skot]

I am also guilty of hoarding all pieces of timber however small...but I have a monitoring system for the small bits.

When I collect 50 pieces of the same type and roughly the same size I throw 1 out....then put those aside and start towards a new collection of 50.

[Pat]

Guilty as charged. I have been known to purchase "short" lengths (around 1000mm) in packs to keep for just that job. As mainly a Turner, I'll cut bowl blanks out of slabs, then try to get as many Box/Bottle Stopper/Pen blanks as possible. I have a surfeit of NSW Rosewood and Ironbark blanks under the extension table of the Yellow Peril.

[John.G]

Sometimes I look at whats going down the waste chute here and feel a sense of regret at the sheer volume of "good" waste. Pen blanks, knife handles, box making timbers: it's got no place in a commercial pack if its under 900 long when we're cutting cabinet/joinery timbers, and small cross sections at any length devalue the balance of the pack as well so they only go in to fill holes between the wider boards.

Then I do the maths.
What it would cost to recover them (resaw/dock/storage and handling/marketing) against what they would fetch at market.
And in my gut I know the best thing I could do would be to install a CHP plant to generate electricity when I burn the stuff.
There's no such thing as "good" waste. Waste is waste.

[chambezio]

Yeh my habits are probably the same as most already written. With my stash, I tend to go through it periodically and cull out twisted, cupped unusable pieces. Its hard to get stuck into the cull because "they look so good" (grain wise). So I tend to make room for more offcuts that probably will never get used for their supposed intended use.
The outcome of all this is wasted space taken up with stored bits at the cost of not being able to move around between benches and machines culminating in fits of frustration.
I put a 6 metre carport in front of the shed to give me room to start a WWII Jeep restoration project and guess what? The intended space is full of all the wrong stuff and the project has stalled even before it started....more frustration.
Is it a disease? Well it sure feels like one.


I have a mate in town who has his own Benchtop Postforming business. He started as a white board Cabinet Maker and has specialised in this business and is very successful. His workshop is spotless!!!! At anytime you can go there and there may be only a minimal amount of stuff behind his Altendorf. If you are chasing a piece of laminate for a small job its not worth trying him because ALL waste goes into the jumbo bin. If its surplus to a particular job...its gone.
The workshop resembles an aircraft repair facility, as far as cleanliness goes!
I can only wish my home set up could get as clean and uncluttered as his.

[Mobyturns]

Sometimes I look at whats going down the waste chute here and feel a sense of regret at the sheer volume of "good" waste. Pen blanks, knife handles, box making timbers: it's got no place in a commercial pack if its under 900 long when we're cutting cabinet/joinery timbers, and small cross sections at any length devalue the balance of the pack as well so they only go in to fill holes between the wider boards.

Then I do the maths.
What it would cost to recover them (resaw/dock/storage and handling/marketing) against what they would fetch at market.
And in my gut I know the best thing I could do would be to install a CHP plant to generate electricity when I burn the stuff.
There's no such thing as "good" waste. Waste is waste.

It is unfortunate that some usable material becomes waste. The reality of life is that the economics of finding a market do not stack up or the potential markets cannot consume the volumes of usable waste generated.

A local company here offered their solid furniture grade timber waste to me on behalf of the club on the condition that they were only dealing with one individual who would respect their requirements, safety policies etc. A nice relationship if it can be established & maintained. It kept quite a few "disadvantaged" turners in blanks while I was at the club.

[Chris Parks]

I have always tried to be tidy in the workshop and went to extreme lengths to store what I thought I needed, in fact I spent a fair amount of money and time building a second level of storage for "one day" items that in the end never got used along with tool boards, big ones metres long. When I started Clearvue I was forced to take a hard look at it all as I needed the space so a trailer got backed into the workshop two or three times, filled up and it all went to the tip. I then worked out that bench space, any flat area was used as storage so I cut the bench space in half and over a period of time I have reduced the stuff I stored to a very small amount by reducing the available storage, I literally pulled all the shelving down so I can't store it and timber racks along with drawers for tools etc got built out of it. I suppose I had an advantage in that I don't like clutter and hate not being able to find something straight away. I am glad I did it when I did because my health is not what it used to be and I doubt I would have the strength or drive to do it now.

To me clutter and being in an untidy workshop is just a bad habit, if you can start the process of being tidy then it becomes the habit and the old ways don't return. I am still struggling with the amount of inherited items from our parents, stuff we will never use but some of it is irreplaceable. My kids will never use them either so do we just toss it or what. I had thousands of books collected over my lifetime, not valuable, just paper backs, some technical stuff etc and in all that was a collection of National Geographic magazines I started in 1964 and it was ended in 2005. My kids told me they had no interest so I got rid of the lot and bought a Kindle, even the Salvation Army did not want any of it.

[John.G]

It is unfortunate that some usable material becomes waste. The reality of life is that the economics of finding a market do not stack up or the potential markets cannot consume the volumes of usable waste generated.

A local company here offered their solid furniture grade timber waste to me on behalf of the club on the condition that they were only dealing with one individual who would respect their requirements, safety policies etc. A nice relationship if it can be established & maintained. It kept quite a few "disadvantaged" turners in blanks while I was at the club.

Here's the deal. Organize a bin... Mesh sides so it gets air circulation, something I can shift about with the forklift. I've probably got enough scrap steel here for a frame that I'll donate if you want, and welder etcetera but I'd be short on the mesh. Inch by inch shouldn't fit through the holes.
I'm 2 hours north of Townsville... Get it here and parked up by the docker and we can fill it with off cuts that look worth the trouble. When it's full (or someone wants to take a drive) I'll call and you send up a ute to empty it into. Some will be dry, most will be green. Some will be shorts, some will trail out to a waney edge or have a bit of shake and you'll have to rip the good stuff out of it. Or just use it for BBQs. If you get too much: hock it here and we split the proceeds. Donate my half to the RFDS.

Ive got Silver Ash, BSW and maple and more maple and more maple for the next few weeks then it'll be back to hardwood for a bit, so in terms of "nice" sooner would be better. When I swing back into hardwood we might be there for 6 months and the pickings will get lean, but even then there's odd bits and pieces. All I ask is a no hassle relationship and you can have the stuff.