The Wood Scrap Pile

  It has been hot in the shop.     Lately I find myself at the computer (in the air conditioning) catching up on several old wood e-mails that I have received over the past few weeks.   E-mails from wood magazines and clubs that I had not taken the time to read earlier.      There happened to be a few "Three day"  tool sale e-mails that were included in that unread pile.    Some had some pretty nifty tools on them that I could use.    The problem is that the three days have long passed.   (This process saved me some money.    Money that I will someday need to have on hand to cover my Obama Health care program.)

   Today I found myself reading a blog written by Chris Schwarz.     The article was referring to wood workers who have the habit of stock piling lumber and the disadvantages of doing that practice.  (I felt like I had been tagged as a "Horder" or something.)   Chris tries to avoid doing that himself as he claims it takes up a lot of space in the shop or in an outbuilding that is used for storage.  He also stated that when you want to build something, you never have enough of the wood you need on hand and you have to buy some additional wood which never seems to match the wood you have been saving.       He suggest that you use left over scraps as campfire wood...  (A little pain seemed to hit me in the heart.   I made a vow to never read Chris' blog again.)  

      On the picture to the left are some left over pieces from last week's bunk bed project and a piece of screen that I happened to have on hand.    I wanted to build a box that I could use to screen small amounts of soil.     I have an area in my garden that the owner of that property piled snow on last year and when the snow melted there were several driveway rocks in my garden.   So I was looking for something that I could use to sift the soil to remove some of those rocks.  

       I built two box frames and placed the screen in the middle.   This is probably not my finest wood working project, but it was one that seemed kind of fun.    (Like trying to lay rocks across the river to build a dam. - A boy thing.)   Another use for this will be for when the grand kids and I go out hunting with the metal detector.     Once the beeping indicates where the metal object is, we can start digging and placing the dirt on the screen.     The dirt will fall through and the metal (or gold coins) will stay above the screen.  (So far I have found a total of six cents.  Don't laugh.   That is a better return than I get from investing in mutual funds.)

     There Chris Schwarz!   It did not cost me a dime and I can't wait to try it out.  (No - No - No - Mrs. Cat.   That is not something I built for the use of cleaning out your litter box.   Besides, if you were a real pet, when the urge hit you, you would forget the litter box and have a desire to go outside and mark a tree or something.)

   It worked quite well.    Each time I go to our garden, I sift out an ice cream bucket of rocks.   Yep.    It won't be long and I will have all those holes in my driveway filled in.