Reusing offcuts

Every workshop has the pile. It is against the wall behind the door, or on the rack above the bench, and it is made of pieces that were genuinely too good to throw away on the day they were cut.

Almost none of it will ever be used, and the reason is not laziness.

Why the pile fails

An offcut has to survive three tests to become stock, and the pile fails all three:

• You have to know it exists. Nobody remembers a 940 by 380 piece of 18 mm oak veneer from five weeks ago while quoting a job.
• You have to be able to find it. Standing on edge behind eleven other pieces is not findable.
• It has to be the right shape. A piece kept because it was big is not the same as a piece kept because something will fit on it.

So the pile grows until somebody needs the floor space, and then it goes in a skip in one afternoon, which is the only time anybody handles it twice.

What makes an offcut worth keeping

Set a minimum size and stick to it. It should be the smallest part you regularly make, plus your trim. For most cabinet shops that is somewhere around 300 by 200. Below that it is packing material, and pretending otherwise is how the pile starts.

Then be honest about material. An offcut is only stock if you would buy it. Half a sheet of 18 mm white melamine is stock. Half a sheet of a discontinued laminate that matched one customer's kitchen is not, however good it looks.

What an offcut library actually is

A list of pieces with three facts each: material, size, and where it is. That is the whole idea. The software part is trivial. The discipline is not.

In Cut Solver an offcut goes on the stock list alongside full sheets, with its own dimensions and a location note. When a layout runs, offcuts get used before full sheets, because a piece you already own is cheaper than a piece you have to buy.

The important behaviour is what happens after the cut: the offcut comes off the list, and any new piece large enough goes on it. If that step does not happen the library becomes a list of things you do not have, which is worse than no list.

The location field is the whole thing

People skip it and the library dies. A piece recorded as 1180 by 420 in 18 mm oak veneer, with nothing saying where it is, is a piece you will not go and look for on a Tuesday morning with a customer waiting.

Write the rack number, the bay, the wall. Two words is enough. If your workshop has no locations, invent four and paint them on the wall, because the library is only as good as the worst thing about finding a piece.

When to stop keeping

Put a date on every offcut. Anything over a year old that has not been used is not stock, it is furniture. Melamine and MDF store fine, but veneered board fades unevenly if it sees daylight and will not match a fresh sheet, so a two year old piece of oak veneer is a trap rather than a saving.

Reviewing the list twice a year and throwing out the dead entries takes twenty minutes and it is what keeps the rest of it trustworthy.

What it is worth

On the kitchen job exactly one piece was worth keeping, the 1598 by 645 left on the last sheet. It went onto the list and came back out on a bathroom job three weeks later. Ten sheets left nothing but strips, which is the normal ratio and the reason a minimum size matters more than enthusiasm.

On the flooring job exactly one piece was worth keeping, a 1197 mm board end, and eleven others were under 200 mm and went in the bin without ceremony. Knowing which is which is most of the skill.