Cleaned out my shop and found I've saved over 400 sample wood blocks

I was sorting through old bins yesterday and started stacking all my little test pieces for stains and finishes. I mean, I knew I had a lot, but I counted them and it was 412. Most are from the last ten years, each one from a different job or experiment. It hit me that it's a full record of every color match and weird wood type I've ever tried to figure out. Does anyone else have a weird collection like this, or am I just a pack rat with a finishing problem?

2 comments

2 Comments

eva_hayes10d ago

Oh wow, that's not a collection, that's a whole archive! @kelly.daniel, I get the museum of bad guesses, but 412 pieces is like a full library system. You could probably open a tiny gallery called "Shades of Regret and One-Off Experiments." What's the weirdest looking block you've got?

kelly.daniel11d ago

Man, I feel seen. My garage has a whole shelf dedicated to failed stain tests and weird offcuts. I've got a piece of pine that looks like a muddy orange from when I tried to match cherry with the wrong base, and a chunk of poplar that turned neon green with some old gel stain. I tell myself it's for reference, but really it's just my own little museum of bad guesses.