I’ve built up a pretty good pile of small scraps of wood I just can’t bear to toss over the years: verawood, ebony, rosewood, mahogany, purpleheart, but even just some nice maple, sitka spruce, red cedar, walnut, etc. I started carving some into pendants this winter, and some look pretty good, but I’m looking for ideas for really small or weirdly shaped scrap – everything from 1/2" lathe ends with a hole in them, to long 1/2" x 3/8" x 4’, a small clip of the pile under the picture.
I’ve heard a few people just throw them into baggies and sell/give to crafty folks, which I might do in the end. But I figure if I can make stuff to give away as gifts or sell at a craft fair, all the better… but outside of jewellery, not sure what else to do. The are NOT big enough for endgrain cutting boards, and most have a couple rounded or uneven edges.
I’ve got a length of 4 inch PVC pipe for a mold that I fill with the scraps, then fill with epoxy. Once it cures I pop it out and slice the “log” in to coasters on the band saw. The cross sectional cuts turn out pretty interesting.
I vote you just start gluing shit together until you’ve got some funky blanks for the lathe. I buy a lot of turning kits from here, could give you some ideas.
I did try that once but you’re right I should give it a go again with better wood choices (verawood is just too waxy to glue unless you treat it right I guess.)
Could you try doing the epoxy thing with them? Place it all in a x by x rectangle with enough depth so you can cut it in half after you epoxy.
So create a flat cross section of the random wood and hope it looks cool.
If that makes sense?
Hell yeah. Bookmatched chaos.
Ohhh, I hadn’t even thought of that, and I have done some small epoxy projects before. I guess the question would be then what after that… But at least it would be a bigger chunk to work with.
I’ve wanted to make something like this for a while, but I never knew where to find such tiny scrap wood pieces like what you have. I certainly don’t have the tools to make custom pieces, which seems like it’d be necessary. Unfortunately it looks like there are a ton of cheap “alleys” and even diy kits being sold now, so not likely to make any money even though they’re cool.
Guitar fretboard inlays, maybe?
Dice?
That leaf could make an excellent money clip.
Plumb Bob is always useful!
I have a habit of gluing up long thin scraps into a panel and then making coasters or something.
'I’ve heard a few people just throw them into baggies and sell/give to crafty folks, which I might do in the end. ’
Yeah. Seems like they could be put to good use by assemblage artists, e.g. Kris Kuksi types.
mushrooms :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fcfrjR8P3M
For the lathe-end stubs, are they big enough to glue together for either bottle stoppers or maybe even small egg kaleidoscopes (with layers going up instead side-to-side)?
For the long ones, can any of them be used as pen blanks? Either top and bottom as separate pieces, or a mini-pen like this or this?
I’ve also seen where they trimmed down the outside of a pen blank like it was a pen (it had a top and bottom piece joined by metal), but didn’t drill out the center. Instead, they drilled a small hole into the top and placed a soft alligator clip into the hole. It’s to hold the end of a bracelet while you clasp the ends together.
I do recognize that each of these requires sourcing the metal, glass, etc, bits needed to complete the project, but these are the things that I thought of.
I really like the bottle stoppers. Not sure I really have anything big enough but I’m going to see what I can glue up. The bigger pieces are usually softwoods too, unfortunately, but even just carving something decorative for the top could be cool.
