The many faces of wood scrap

The best thing about scrap wood is that it comes in SO many varieties. There's always the natural scrap wood that is everywhere and considered unsightly to most people. Here is what I picked up in less than 10 minutes and it provided me a warm fire on a cold January evening.There is the endless array of small pieces of construction waste, an omnipresent thing in this rapidly expanding town. Lumber can be connected in a simple but structural way through a scarf joint (see illustration below), which creates a dimensional and solid structural member for projects.Scarfing, a word I associate with scrapping, ties elements together with the most effective joinery. This is always a good skill when dealing with any kind of leftover materials.This selection of scrap wood (left) are the remnants from the laser cutters at the new Tech Shop in Round Rock. The potential of these little goodies makes my heart spin!These super cool chairs come from Austin’s Petrified Design. They reuse the wood from local wine barrels and the cask curve creates that sexy seat and back. My favorite part though, is the fact that the color comes from the wine stained oak. Now that’s a natural solution!You can find the chairs at Mockingbird Domestics, a fairly new shop located at 2515 South Lamar. It has a delightful mix of vintage and modern and the whole store reads like a healthy recipe file of natural, honest, and repurposed materials.The airy nest pictured below graces the front yard of a house on Bluebonnet. The thinnest non-sensical wood scraps become an imaginary floating cocoon for all species to enjoy.How do you reuse wood scraps in your projects?