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 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.
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.)
Guitar fretboard inlays, maybe?
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.
That leaf could make an excellent money clip.
Dice?
I have a habit of gluing up long thin scraps into a panel and then making coasters or something.
Plumb Bob is always useful!
'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.
