Walk into any timber yard and you’ll see a distinct hierarchy. The crème de la crème – perfectly straight boards, newly painted and stacked up like soldiers in formation are upfront. But somewhere in the back is the junk bin: offcuts left over from commercial orders.
Timber merchants aren’t wasteful, they create offcuts purely because of the very nature of commercial projects, which demand consistency of length (imagine a carpenter ordering a dozen pieces of 2-meter long wood: when the lumber arrives, it tends to come in 2.4-meter lengths, giving him 12 lengths of 0.4 metres and so 4.8 metres of timber). That means you get to take home that spare 0.4 metres. In other words, when the merchant breaks up the 2.4-meter planks, he creates small chunks that are no longer worth his time to sell. Which, of course, makes the junk bin the ultimate secret weapon of any serious DIYer, crafter or weekend warrior.
That said, there’s a catch. If you’re building a large deck, you don’t have much to gain by scrounging around the offcuts. The pieces are just too small to make a difference. But if you’re making picture frames, floating shelves, a bespoke birdhouse or fashionably knotty cheese boards or coasters, then you’re throwing money away every time you buy ‘longs’ (the timber industry’s word for full-length planks). For help from Timber Merchants Portsmouth, visit a site like https://www.timbco.co.uk/timber-merchants-portsmouth/
To squeeze the most out of the junk bin, go prepared. Bring the sizes you need. Be prepared to make compromises if the merchant doesn’t have precisely the right dimensions. If they’ve got a piece of oak that’s a fraction of an inch too small for your birdhouse design, just scale down your plans.
Take a moment to look beyond the dust and stains accumulated in the timber yard. Ten minutes with a hand plane or sanding block reveals beautifully worked grain beneath. You can’t spot them easily but they’re there. Ask your merchant where the offcuts bin is, wade in, pick them up yourself and you’ll save money while earning the respect of the merchant and the gruff, seasoned workers who will soon start saving you great lumber as a matter of course. Once you know where to look, you’ll find plenty of it.
