Compsand Scraps

Whadya do with your scraps?

I’ve used em for fins, tail, and nose blocks but still end up with a pile like this.

After all the resawing, thicknesing, sanding ect. it kills me to use em for starting fires. Why not just piece em together? For every couple of boards I make for friends I probably end up with enough scraps to make one for myself. Here’s my first scrap board ( with surf trux which I dig - haven’t seen much feedback on these. )

I was going to use scrap foam as well but scored a big block of EPS cheap a while back and my local dump started recycling scraps of foam so that got pushed back a bit.

I’m just finishing my second scrap board but no pics yet. Anyone else tried this?


Jong, totally brilliant. The board looks excellent, you have some really interesting grain patterns in there. SHWEEET!

Peace!

My 5yr old made this sword out of the scrap pile.

I did this to put on to side of the fort.

Yes I have boys.

Give them to a school for art projects.


I made my favorite bonzer entirely out of balsa scraps 12" and shorter, then did an opaque resin tint over it to hide all the seams.

lillibel made a great post on compsand about using glass scraps for inside skin laminates.

ingenious, methinks.

I have this wide cloth so I get a lot of offcut…I hate throwing things away and it seemed

like a great way to extend the life of my cloth roll.

I see a lot of stuff in that pile that would make for good rail lay ups.

This is another reason why I’m really hung up on improving the speed and material efficiency

of rail layups…that can be a pretty expensive pile of waste, all tolled.

Yeah, I’m using scrap glass layed in strips under the wood as well. With meter wide rolls I probably use half as much glass this way. These boards don’t cost me any more than a regular glass over foam board to make. It does take more time to lay up the deck and bottom panels though.

If you do a herring bone pattern on the bottom you can use a lot of small pieces.

I’ve done the herring bone thing a couple of times as well. What about just laying pieces width wise. I’ve got some paulownia logs a bit over a meter long I’m going to be cutting up soon. I was thinking of using them cross ways on a board instead of length wise. Probably make the board a bit more flexy. It is harder to bend the pieces over the rail when they’re oriented that way. That was the down side to the herring bone pattern I found - I ended up having to put more wood on the rails.

Jong,

Great! Looks like you pieced them together to minimize waste. Please post a more detailed close-up picture, so we could see better how you put the pieces together.

You could use the techniques used in Marquetry and Parquetry to put the pieces together. I like yours because it looks like your intention was to minimize waste.

Hey Glenn,

The first one I did I just chose any piece that seemed to fit. Some of the thicknesses and wood densities were slightly different and that made it a pain to sand. On the one I’m doing now I tried to match the densities and ran all the pieces through a speed sander to get exactly the same thickness. I still put them together pretty randomly but it’s been much easier. I’m using paulownia a bit over 2mm thick. I overlap the edges of the pieces I want to join and cut through both with a knife. I’m using a #11 scalpel blade but a regular razor knife works just about as well.

Heres a couple pictures of the one in the works. It’s 6’2" and wide- hopefully a fun small wave board. The blunt nose is at the encouragement of my neighbor who lost an eye from an encounter with a pointy nosed board with a rubber nose guard on it no less.

Close up of the bottom:


Beautiful man

I’m interested to know what speed sander you use?

I’m contemplating buying one, and wondering what you’d reccommend here in NZ

I like that trick for joining boards together, I hold both pieces against a straight edge, then cut them with the blade, helps keep everything true.

I think you’ve inspired me to be a bit more creative with irregular joins, rather than square 90deg cuts. that board looks insane

Kit

Hey Kit,

I got the sander from toolshed. It took a bit of fiddling to get it running true but it works great for the light woods you’d use for compsands. Carba Tec also has this one and a couple more beefier ones but they don’t go as thin - I think 6mm is the thinnest.

you gotta have a dust extractor for it too.

SWEET!

Wow, didn’t realize what you were doing that first pic. I thought the angles were from the grain. Very cool.

Quote:
I overlap the edges of the pieces I want to join and cut through both with a knife. I'm using a #11 scalpel blade but a regular razor knife works just about as well.

Brilliant work! Excellent use of the scraps. I did some research into Marquetry and other offshoots of that art-form a while back. Much of it is done as you did with overlapping and then also cut on a scroll saw too. For the geometric stuff of Parquetry they make special jigs similar to basic cross-cut sleds to cut the pieces on the table saw.

Thanks man!

I’ve realised I asked you about that a year or so ago, sorry to repeat myself :slight_smile:

I must have not looked hard enough on the toolshed site

Cheers!