I call it "scrounging". My mother got me into it.

All 3 of my kayak paddles have shafts from scrap dumpster wood.

I used to work residential construction. I had first "dibs" on everything in the dumpster. One caveat was that I'd always ask my boss for stuff that I'd thrown away so there was no appearance of "impropriety"!

I still have the equivalent of 5 sheets of 3/4" AC plywood up in the garage rafters that will become Guillemot forms this winter.

One sad story: the last home we worked on had "board & bat" siding...beautiful long pieces of red cedar with the occasional knot. We cut outside corner molding from 2" stock, so all the inside 1" x 1" pieces got discarded.

One Saturday afternoon, I scrounged a bunch and cut 40-50 board feet into 1/4" x 3/4" pieces. My boss came in Sunday, thought it was scrap, and tossed it on the burn pile. I didn't notice the nice fire until Monday afternoon, and it was reduced to ash by then.

Two weeks later, on another Saturday afternoon, I pulled them all out of the dumpster and probably cut 70-80 board-feet of 1/4" x 3/4" stock to build several boats from. I had driven my car, so I just taped them all together in a big bundle and put them under the work table, out of the way. I had school on Monday, and arrived on Tuesday and found that one of the old airheaded carpenters had cut it all into 3' pieces for the painters to lay boards on while they dried. I was sooo close to crying and then soooo close to beating him within an inch of his life! Well, maybe not that close to beating an "old senile man", but I sure gave him a hard time of it!

Shawn

> We used to call it "scrumping" (sp?) - a term coined by a
> British friend.

> I am glad that I am not alone in checking the dumpsters ;-)

> Hank