What to do with this accidential find solid maple strips

So my brother just came into this 500 pieces of 3/4x2x20 solid maple. but has no idea what to do with it



anyone have some ideas I can throw at him,

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I know someone who will be getting a laser soon who could make all sorts of stuff from that…:laughing:

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Maple smoke makes meat delicious!

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Send a few this way? :smile:

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Its from his shop these are off cuts, its kind of like when you work for a shop be it wood or auto you can bring the tools home for the weekend for your own projects buts you cant use them for side jobs. same deal with off cut wood

sorry

Well, as his sibling, i hope you at least get a crack at them! :smile:

3/4… so that’s well above what a GF can handle unless engrave… but resaw to 1/4 or 1/5 on plainer maybe but that 2 inch doesn’t give much unless we do a glue up etc…

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My first thought was to recreate the “pallet-sign” or “apple-box” style of signage/art. The horizontal slats don’t have to have a tight joint, and are easily tacked to a pair of vertical slats on the back using a pneumatic stapler, glue, nails, zipties, lengths of rusty barbed-wire, etc…



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Glue them up into cutting boards then engrave them?

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I have a similar conundrum. I have thousands of medical-grade tongue depressors. The are all defect free. Don’t know what kind of wood.

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oh, thats easy. Host a ninja party.

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oh…pickup sticks. :slight_smile:

With the tongue depressors, you could laser engrave fortunes on them, and make one of those Fortune Telling Games out of it. (Hide them in a can, have someone pick one and read their fortune for the day.)

They could also be engraved with chores for the kids and they get to pick one to earn their allowance.

(Or are parents not doing that anymore? My sister and I had to work our butts off every Saturday for our pocket money. At least that’s what it felt like at the time.)

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Cutting boards of maple are my favorite. Perhaps you can have someone who has access to a bandsaw and resaw them into thinner sticks. Plane and make rulers. Oh boy. That’s a find.

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Ha! That would be a blast.

Another thought is that I could glue them side-by-side in planes, cross-grained with the next plane, and make my own plywood.

Any suggestions on what kind of wood glue cuts easily and safely?

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You could make a lot of chopsticks

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So my initial thought was to do a end grain cutting board and stain them different colors… then I realized that stain not edible and when you went to finish it you would sand different color stains off.

but yes just a plain jane maple cutting board with some oil would be just fine

he has two full workshops, including many CNC’s (about kerfgate… when I said so tool size and kerf do you compensate in your design by over sizing it for kerf or by cam and just tell it your tool size… he looked at my and said what are you a idiot you do it in cam you never want to compromise your cad’s as you will mess up your mechanical motions as well as your material stress analysis as well as the design is now not portable or if once you get on the floor and you find out that your tool you wanted to use is busted so you want to use another you would have to go back and redesign the entire thing vs just telling cam on the machine always cam and tool size) (just candid sibling feed back from someone that has ran CNC for 7+ years)

holy smokes that would be massive plywood

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butcher-block-ply!

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Sorry for the confusion; I was referring to the tongue depressors.

Any experience out there cutting through various glues?

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with laser no but with traditional tools they are all butter

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So your brother’s response to kerf somehow clicked compensating for the kerf (glug, glug) to a new level. It helped me understand better why this is such a complicated question. Everyone has different approaches depending on design software and motion control software dependent on machine and tool.

I think with that many clear pieces some type of large surface would make a great impact. Don’t stop at a cutting board but do a whole bar top.

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