Material Savings

With the economy the way it is these days, I struggled to find the funds to get materials to cut with. As I'm sure a lot of you know, it can lead to a lot of cost.

This made me think back to when I was in the business of doing woodwork with my father. We use to have a lot of scrap wood that we would give away to whoever came to the shop and got the scraps. We only required them to load it themselves. Anyways, I decided that I would make a few phone calls to local wood shops and see what they did with their scraps. With scrollsawing, you don't need very big pieces. If you do, you can glue up slabs (which can make some really interesting grains). I first contacted cabinet shops and wasn't shocked when I was told they gave away their scraps or grinded them to make shavings. I worked out an agreement with them that I would come once a week and take all they had. Of course I only use about 50% of what I get from them, but hey it's free and they have to pay to have it hauled off. So that was the agreement. It didn't cost them anything to get rid of it and I had some great and sometimes exotic woods and some firewood.

My next place to contact was tree trimmers, as they just cut the trees and grind them. I found a couple of small business (not the big companies as they have their waste used for other things). So I made an agreement with them that if they would haul it to my barn I would take all they could bring. Of course this only works when the tree trimming is in season. But again, you get some great wood, plus you have the wood with the bark still on it. Now of course it takes a while to dry, but if you have a good storage area that is enclosed to the weather and humidity, then it works out. Usually, if you get enough from the trimmers, you'll have enough to last until some more dries. A good way to store this is take and make an airtight area in your barn or shop with plastic sheeting and lay the woods un-milled in it until it dries. Drying time varies depending on the type of wood.

One other place I thought about checking in with is a pallet company as most pallets are made from hardwoods. To my luck, we have one here where I live and they were not as kind as the other sources b/c they have to buy their wood also. But I did make an agreement with them that I would provide them with a trailer and if they would load it and contact me when it was loaded (standard car trailer double axle) I would take all they had. They were happy with that and I pay them $20 a load. Now out of each load I could use over 3/4 of the load, the other I used for other things (backers and bottoms for the drill press).

So, in closing, if you will just take out your phone book and look in it for anything dealing with woodwork, you'll be surprised at what you'll be able to get for no money or for a nominal fee and very little work. And one last place to look at is as your driving down the road going on with your day, look at other peoples yards and see what they may have laying out for trash or haul off, I've found some great birdseye maple, tiger maple, and mahogany from furniture people were just throwing away. Never forget the classifieds in newspapers either. They sometimes have free furniture if you haul it off. You can find some great woods this way. Never, think just because you may be short on funds you have to sacrifice the choice in materials you use as there are a lot of places that you can get great scrolling wood as most pieces aren't very big and with a little of time you to can search and find a great wood source without it costing an arm and leg or having to take a loan.