Leftovers

We found ourselves trying to answer the age-old question: What do you do with unused wood? In our case, we had a number of pieces cut into .5" x .5" rails from the scarf box project. What could we possibly do with those? Well, we had one idea.

First we needed to cut them all to 2.5" in length (this will be clear in a second). We rigged up a temporary shim on the saw to ensure everything was a uniform length.

That yielded a range of pieces in the same light-medium-dark tones as the box. In all we cut a bunch of pieces and started gluing them together in layers of 5. If you're counting at home, that would make 5 layers of .5" wood or...2.5". See? Clever, right?

After some trial and error with glue and clamps, we settled on creating a temporary rig to create a tight 2.5" x 2.5" housing for our pieces as they dried.

The result is...a paperweight or maybe the world's least movable Rubik's Cube. We don't know, we just make the things.

Here's one version without our favorite clear sealer (on left) and one with. Also these are the  two variations we made--one rotating the layers and one keeping everything in the same direction.

Finally, here are the full results in all their glory. Not a hard project but an amusing one.