Offcut Management (Project)

In order to keep the shop clean and neat, and have a rack with offcuts that are actually useful, we have designed the following offcut selection guidelines.

In the shop you will find, next to the packing station and some machinery, a poster showing you the logic that you need to follow in order to put an offcut on the rack. After following the flowchart you will be able to discern if the offcut meets the criteria, however, you can choose to dispose your offcuts directly into the bin (you can’t throw pieces that are already on the rack though unless they don’t meet the criteria to be there). Every person will have different criteria when it comes to offcuts and some develop a strong “emotional attachment” with scraps (in other words they just end up hoarding scraps). This policy/guideline brings a little bit of clarification to the matter and enforces rules to keep the rack tidy and useful.

There are a couple of possible outcomes for the offcuts. Here’s an explanation for each one of them.

The algorithm could lead you to “death row”. Every Wednesday’s shop meeting, volunteers should check all the pieces mark for death row and dispose them. This means that, once a piece is marked with “color” tape, is going to stay in the shop for a maximum of one week.

The cause runner can discretionally mark pieces for death row if they find that have been living for too long on the shop or don’t meet the criteria to stay.

To improve the order there’s a dedicated and properly labelled bin to leave the offcut’s marked for death row

In the shop, you will find a box labelled “small wooden pieces box”. This box is intended to keep small offcuts of good quality wood that could serve for small projects such as handles, pieces for jigs, lathe projects and any other applications for small pieces.

The usage of the box should give small pieces a home, helping to keep the rack organized and giving a visual indication of how many small pieces are laying around.

The box should contain only hardwood and softwood but no construction timber. This will keep the quality of the offcuts (if you want a small piece of construction lumber you can take a big piece from the rack and take a chunk for yourself).

Simple as it sounds if the offcut meets the criteria you can leave it on the rack. Even though you can do this, you can as well to decide discretionally to throw it to the bin. Always try to keep in mind to be considerate in terms of wastefulness but at the same time keeping the shop tidy is a thing that will improve the shop experience in general.

If you have second thoughts or don’t know what to do, you can always mark the pieces for death row and they could get a review by the cause-runners on a Wednesday.

If the piece doesn’t meet the criteria should go straight into the bin. Sometimes you might have second thoughts or might think that that piece “could be used for something”. Have no doubts that we have been through this a lot of times and that only leads to having a 40ft container full of rubbish.

This guideline is not a gospel but it is the current rules in this matter, so we need to apply it. Having said this, any time is a good time to propose changes to it and review it. To do so you can always start a conversation on Discord (that will probably lead to the Forum) or go straight into the forum to make yourself be heard.