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Although not specifically for or about tools, I thought I would pass this little gem on to you (even though I think I may have mentioned it somewhere before). Anyway, I just wanted to talk a bit about plastic twine.
Plastic twine is the thin, stretchy, Saran wrap like stuff on the cardboard handle that you buy at the self storage place. Normally you would think of it when binding together loose items to be packed away or moved. However, this stuff simplifies your woodshop organization like nothing else can.
Like every other woodworker I have a burgeoning pile of scrap wood. I have only been in my present shop for a little better than three years and I am having trouble with the load of offcuts and small pieces that pile up with every project I complete. Some of them sit in buckets, too small to be used for anything but clamping blocks, and some are very large, occupying their own space on the lumber pile. Yet there are those in-between sized pieces that you know you’ll need for a jig or a drawer stop some day, and they are difficult to sort through and stack, creating a storage problem in the woodshop.
I like to sort these useful scraps into piles. Sometimes the pile is all pieces of similar size, sometimes similar species, usually both. (Pieces of similar size are easier to stack.) Once I have completed this, I grab up handful sized bunches and wrap them with plastic twine. Larger bunches are easier to sort through and stack when rooting through the pile to find that one piece you need for the project you are working on. If left as individual pieces you could be searching through your offcuts all day for one little piece. When they are bundled, a long, tedious job is completed in a matter of minutes. Plastic twine has other uses in addition to sorting out your scrap pile.
I like to use hardwood blocks instead of cool blocks in my bandsaw guides. Rather than go through the pain of making them one at a time as needed, I mill up appropriately sized stock from which I can crosscut new blocks in seconds. I like to keep quite a bit of this material on hand and, to keep it from being lost amongst the pile of little pieces in the shop, I wrap it with a label then a few turns of plastic twine. That keeps the stock all together and makes it easily identifiable when needed.
I find lots of things lying around the shop that I don’t want to get rid of. Many of these things are better stored when bundled with plastic twine. It is easy to use and easy to remove. It doesn’t cost very much either. And you don’t need to restrict it to small objects. Plastic twine is very strong and can hold large lengths of lumber together to help you sort out your wood pile. If you use it for your lumber just remember to wrap it in only two or three spots as you don’t want to interfere with your wood’s ability to respond to atmospheric change.
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