I keep all of my scrap lumber in a box, and once that box becomes full, it’s time to make something out of it. One of the nice things about turning is that it lends itself nicely to the use of such scrap.

I typically glue similarly-dimensioned pieces together to form a board (same width and length) in a somewhat interesting pattern. Then when these are dry, they get planed and glued together to form large and larger blanks.

With these, I turn things like spinning tops or ornaments.

I also had some pen blanks from a lot of pen-turning equipment that I bought at a garage sale. Some pieces already has the brass tubes glued in, and rather than try to suss out what size they were or what pen kit they were from, I used them as ornamentation in some pendants.

All in all, I quite like how they turned out.