After I’ve spread that last coat of polyurethane onto a side table, Adirondack chair, or chicken coop door I’ve crafted, the leftover pieces of cherry and oak and redwood are often, and usually always, too precious and pricey to chuck. But they’re also not meant to accumulate dust or to shelter generations of spiders.
So, once or twice a year, I drag out these leftovers, cutoffs, and waste pieces, and I pick a project or two specifically for them. Mixing and matching hardwoods is fruitful, and customizing simple ideas, such as, say, your basic birdhouse, is a nice feather in your woodworking cap.
The flawed pieces that have been cut away, so as not to introduce a gouge or knot into the shimmering, mahogany tabletop, are perfect here. Even plywood cutoffs, which are excellent for kindling except for the toxic glue, are useful for the unseen backs, floorboards, or roofs of birdhouses, and they also work well chopped into single-use painter’s pyramids for applying finish.
These proverbial misfits can be turned into a feature of your homemade collection. When I first began working with wood, I thought, “If only I could sell something I made. If someone would be willing to spend their dollars on something I crafted, that would be pretty neat.” As it turned out, these
