Advance your woodworking skills with these things to make out of scrap wood, including DIY candleholders, coasters, bookends, photo frames, birdhouses, planter boxes, and more.
After I’ve spread that last coat of polyurethane onto a side table, Adirondack chair, or chicken coop door I’ve crafted, the leftover pieces of cherry, oak, and redwood are often, and usually always, too precious and pricey to chuck. But they’re also not meant to accumulate dust or to shelter generations of spiders.
So, once or twice a year, I drag out these leftovers, cutoffs, and waste pieces, and I pick a project or two specifically for them. Mixing and matching hardwoods is fruitful, and customizing simple ideas, such as, say, your basic birdhouse or owl box, is a nice feather in your woodworking cap.
The flawed pieces that have been cut away, so as not to introduce a gouge or knot into the shimmering, mahogany tabletop, are perfect here. Even plywood cutoffs, which are excellent for kindling except for the toxic glue, are useful for the unseen backs, floorboards, or roofs of birdhouses, and they also work well chopped into single-use painter’s pyramids for applying finish.
These proverbial misfits can be turned into a feature of your homemade collection. When I first began working with wood, I thought, “If only I could sell something I made. If someone would be willing to spend their dollars on something I crafted, that would be pretty neat.” As it turned out, these scrap projects were indeed the first pieces I turned into commerce — pocket-change commerce, admittedly. Though disregarded at first glance, many of these scraps have become favorites of mine.
Things to Make Out of Scrap Wood
Each of these relatively small projects can be done in a modest wood shop. In fact, I finished each of them in my attic wood shop. Yep, the workshop that’s up the pull-down ladder and to the right. (The chop saw and router table are the dust-covered crown jewels of my workshop.) My wood shop is complete with a bedsheet tacked to a rafter to keep the dust away from the Christmas boxes, camping gear, and ski equipment.
In the wood shop, haste makes waste. Here, waste makes finely crafted scrap-wood projects like the following. Each modest project is for the home or yard and could make a wonderful housewarming or holiday gift. These projects are also a chance to prove that one woodworker’s kindling is another’s log cabin.
Versatile Candleholders
Candleholders might be simple, but they’re easily customizable for a bit more complexity and charm. Use these candleholders as an eye-catching centerpiece or unique gift. The alternating wood looks pretty dapper too.
Take some strips of maple and cherry, flip them on their edges, glue up, and then run them through the planer (hand or benchtop) to smoothness. Space out and use the Forstner bit to create some candle holes, and then round over the outer edges.
Once finished crafting your candleholder, try making your own beeswax candles to place in them.
Wood-Burned Coasters
Coasters are another easy project, and they also allow you to practice your wood-burning skills. Cut a 3-1/2-inch square, and route the edges. A cove or chamfer will work well; just ease up on the hardwood and take a few passes, end grain first, of course. Give it a sand.
Find or customize a design, trace or freehand it onto the wood, snag your wood-burning kit, and go to town, carefully.
Because the wood-burning kit only makes an appearance in my shop every couple of years, I like to do a practice run or two on a true throwaway (an unquestionably unusable waste piece).
Fancy DIY Wine Rack
There’s no better way to dress up a few bottles of wine than with a hardwood wine rack with a customized design. Ditch that store-bought, rinky-dink one; a redwood or cherry rack cradling a cabernet or pinot really classes up the joint.
A four- or six-bottle rack is perfect for the kitchen countertop. Lay out the desired number of bottles first, space them out, and then finalize the dimensions.
Mill the four legs and four rails. Jigsaw or bandsaw the half-moons for the bottle necks and bottoms. If you happen to have an oscillating spindle sander, bring those half-moons to a uniform size and smoothness. Pass the router over the sharp edges, apply your favorite joinery (I like to use a dado), semigloss it with polyurethane, and admire your scrappy handiwork.
Floating Wine Bottle Holders
Need party favors? Want to incorporate physics into your woodworking? This floating wine bottle holder will do the trick.
This project is compellingly simple, but a little mathematical know-how (and trial and error) may be in line. Cut some walnut or oak to 10 inches long by 2-1/2 inches wide, or glue up a combo. Forstner bit a 1-1/2-inch hole, 1-3/4 inches from the top. Cut a 45-degree angle on the bottom, round over the edges, sand, and add polyurethane.
Now for trial and error. This project is designed for a standard 750-milliliter wine bottle, but most importantly, the bottom angle might take some finessing (and a re-cut or two), as might the wine bottle. Moving the neck of the bottle farther in or out will change its center of gravity. Test it out gingerly at first, with your hands at the ready.
It may take a couple of tries to get the angle to sync with your bottle (you might find that a 42-degree cut works better than a 45-degree one, for example). Once you find the new center of gravity of your project, it’ll be stable.
Wine Bottle Picnic Caddie
Lay out the picnic blanket in the soft grass, kick off your flip-flops, dig into a creamy potato salad, and uncork that bottle of rosé on a warm summer afternoon. But how to balance it all, especially those delicate wine glasses that were a wedding gift from Aunt Joanie? With a wine caddie.
Chop a piece of redwood at 12 inches, Forstner bit your holes, jigsaw the entry point for the glasses, give it a nice round over, maybe even a cove route, and voilà , it’s summertime and the living is easy!
Monitor-Barn Birdhouse Wine Rack
Here’s an idea that combines wine, birds, and the ramshackle monitor barns I see here around Sonoma County.
Grab some redwood and cut angles for the roof and lower roof into the front and back. Then, trace and jigsaw out the bottle holes. Spindle sand to bring the holes to smooth uniformity. Cut out the sidepieces, then four matching roof pieces. Plywood will work well for the sidepieces. Round over the edges with the router or mix it up with a chamfer. Then, cut to length four dowels, which will shelve the bottles on the inside.
Clamp, glue, add polyurethane, and then go to your grab bag of leftover corks. Lay out a design for the sides, frame them in with a custom molding, and then glue down the corks.
As the perfect habitat for your favorite vintages, this unique piece is sure to turn a few heads and garner inquisitive questions, such as “What species of wine nests in that barn?” Answer: the red and white species of the genus.
Sturdy Bookends and Tabletop Bookcase
A couple of hardwood bookends can hold up your Farmers’ Almanac and A Sand County Almanac, or Faulkner and Hemingway (and, of course, Jim Harrison).
Mix and match or use a single species, such as mahogany or sapele. Route or dado a rabbit so the wood goes together perfectly. Jigsaw some detailed edges, then catch the bead on the round-over bit (an ogee works here too) to give it a slight Victorian edge. Sand, glue, and semigloss with wipe-on.
For a slightly larger project, consider a tabletop bookcase for a bedside table. Cut the sides to average book width, generally 5 to 6 inches, and bandsaw a wavy detail into the top. Dado in the back and shelf, route off the edge sharpness, sand, glue, and add polyurethane.
Now, you’ve got a spot for the stack of books you’re going to read for three minutes before you fall into a deep, deep slumber.
Green-Wing Teal Trinket Shelf
Where to store those knickknacks and doohickies? A dark redwood shelf will make a warm addition to your office or study.
Mill four pieces of redwood, give the sides a bit of detail on the top and bottom with the bandsaw, take a pass to the edges with a cove bit, and then dado the shelves into place. Give it a third shelf for smaller souvenirs or extend the depth for larger thingamajigs.
Cowboy Picture Frames
Picture frames, though seemingly basic, are one of the more challenging scrap projects to tackle. The knots and defects look rustic, and with a photo of Grand Teton elk in the frame, I’ve taken to dubbing this charming project the cowboy picture frame.
Locate an old cabinetry router bit (apply some 3-in-1 oil if rust blooms have sprouted) that will carve out a nice face profile. Rabbit the inside edges for the glass to fit snugly and miter the 45-degree angles. Easy in theory, more difficult when the wood meets the bench.
The most challenging part of this project is the 45-degree parts. Getting the 45-degree clamps to fit securely can be difficult, as is getting the cut pieces to line up in the clamp with precision. Once together, the inside rabbits might need to be expanded slightly to fit the glass. It can also be tricky to hand-sand the little droplets of glue that seep out and harden in the face profile, or to miter the 45-degree pieces at the beginning.
For the glass, I like to buy the cheapest clip frame at the local craft store, usually an 8-by-10-inch or an 11-by-14-inch. I then chuck the clips and keep the glass.
DIY Cozy Birdhouse
Ornithological domiciles are a great option for scrap wood, particularly for plywood waste. You can easily find building plans for birdhouses online, and the warblers and finches will be most thankful for their prefab, single-story rancher. After all, a home without a birdhouse is just a house.
Rip four walls, build a simple box, chop a 10-degree angle on the top, give the edges a round over (or a Roman ogee if you’re feeling plucky), and grab a leftover hinge.
Forstner bit a welcoming entrance hole. Leftover spray paint will spruce up the roof, while a leftover dowel will make an excellent chimney. Bam, avian real estate!
Save the Bees Planter Box
The bees need our help any which way these days, so why not house and nourish them with some layaway redwood? Nesting tubes fill the bottom, and that sweet, sweet lavender serves as the roof.
This one is a basic, open-topped box, with a divider in the center. Redwood looks great hanging on a fence or tree. Give the edges a deep round over and add a charming gate that swings open for access to the lavender. A turning L screw will lock and unlock the gate, and an application of spar polyurethane will shield the redwood from sun and rain. Nesting tubes are pretty common at your local hardware store.
Open the Decorative Barn Door
One chic addition to a modern home is a barn door, whether for the dining room (fashionable) or to hide the cluttered pantry (functional). Build the door, buy the hardware, install the track, and become the architect of your homestead. Why not add a small, cute barn door to an already built side table or TV stand?
Plane and glue the panels, add decorative rails and stiles if the mood strikes, route the edges, sand, and add polyurethane (or spar varnish if it’s going outside).
To procure the hardware, search for “mini barn door hardware,” select from a few different styles, and reach for your wallet (a complete hardware kit costs $50 to $60). Follow the directions that come with the kit, and keep a level nearby so the door is (somewhat) plumb, even if it’s just for decoration.
Whenever I get cabin fever over the winter months or I’m eager to jettison my ever-growing pile of hardwood throwaways, these small scrap-heap projects keep my mind occupied and my woodworking skills sharp.
Sean Stiny is a writer and woodworker in Sonoma County, California. Find more of his projects at Long Road Woodworking.
