Occasionally I like to challenge myself to make a project using only/mostly material I’ve found in the scrap bin. I’m curious if others do this too? If so, can you share what you’ve made?
Stephannie, I found a piece of mesquite wood at the shop in the trash bin that I turned into tap handles for a friend’s birthday. See them here:
Mesquite tap handles with matching epoxy in Black Walnut charcuterie board. | GALLERY (livingontheedgewoodwork.com)
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Your idea challenged me.
An old cookie with an off-center pith wasn’t useful for a clock face. What could I do with it? “A small bowl where the pith was a drain” I thought. To pull this off within an irregular shape and sloping to the pith I created a radial gradient and used that as a depth map image in my design. Properly positioning the cut on the cookie was the only real challenge but I’m happy with how it turned out.
Those are a few hours that I’ll never recover. 
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Very nice @TravisGood - now you have me back to thinking about what I should do with all the various tree sections I have collected from downed trees over the years. 
That looks super cool! Honestly I really like it even before you turned it into a bowl… could have been wall decor
It was just a cookie and a challenge, I have no use for it. 
As for it being art, the interior cut could take any form.
FYI, the radial gradient I used for this looks like:
That is so cool!
Nothing fancy but the day I had my Woodshop orientation I snagged some plywood offcuts so I could hang our bikes in the minute balcony closet of our apartment
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@DirtHurt - those small but functional projects are so satisfying, right?
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Made this toy truck from a piece of 1 by 6 and a piece of 2 by 4 I found in the scrap bin. The wheels some how followed me from when I moved from WV. and finally found a use for them. I bought a dowel rod for the smoke stacks but the rest came from the scrap bin.
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@Stanley that is a delight
@TravisGood - you’ve managed an excellent angle. I quite like the line on the left side of the base, and how that same darker color shows up at the back of the top section.
Made a saloon sign for a friend’s birthday.
Here’s my “Mobile Device → Laser / Wing-it Mission” process
While at the makerspace, I used an iPad to:
(1) find interesting pictures on Google images using web browser (Safari),
(2) used image editor (Procreate.app) to clean up the image,
(3) vectorized the image using a vector image editing app (Vectornator.app),
(4) made shapes & text (also using Vectornator),
(5) exported as PDF,
(6) Saved PDF to Google Drive using the Files.app,
(7) Downloaded the PDF on Tarkin’s computer using Chrome / Google Drive
(8) Imported PDF to Lightburn, and assigned “cut”, “etch”, “fill” to the imported shapes.
(9) Laser blasted on some scrap 
It was a ton of fun - my friend was happy with the gift. She appreciated the burnt smell and the singed edges of the burns (which I was trying to figure out how to avoid)…
Thanks to Danny for continuously improving the laser experience - it’s noticed and appreciated.
Great question @stepho !
Stay warm y’all.
-JRO
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@JRO What a delightful project. I also really appreciate your step by step on this, as it’s just about the right amount of effort I’m likely to put into early laser attempts. Great to know one version of an ipad workflow.
Also, I’ve had some success removing the slightly charred color from the laser with a few passes of a Magic Eraser.
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Working on a set of speakers for my P.C. The two desk top and the sub-woofer cabinets will all be made of 3/4" Maple faced plywood scraps left over from making a Paulk Smart Bench. After making the cutouts for Paulk’s torsion box style knockdown bench I have a sheets worth of scraps of different sizes. Just can’t see wasting expensive plywood.
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I did not get the scrap wood from Asmbly, but what I did was go around to new house construction areas and asked the super of the development area if it was okay to grab some scrap pieces they had in their trash bin on the sites. Of course I had to do alot of milling but in the end it was worth it. All was done with scrap 2x4 and 2x6 pine.
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@Allzman - Great strategy for finding materials. Fewer things going into the landfill, you end up with a lovely piece. Wins all around. Really lovely work.
Made this for a birthday gift. It was already stained in the scrap bin so I was able to focus on getting laser settings correct on Pearl 
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