Community Firewood Center

It gets very cold in many parts of the northern United States, especially in the winter. For most people, this is just uncomfortable, but for people without safe, warm housing, it can be dangerous. They may spend long hours outside in freezing temperatures without good coats, gloves, hats, or a warm place to sleep.

A study published in JAMA found that cold‑related deaths in the United States more than doubled between 1999 and 2022, leading to over 40,000 deaths. This shows how serious cold weather can be for people who do not have steady shelter or reliable heat. The Community Woodshed is my idea for helping with this problem by giving people a simple, shared place to access firewood and stay warm.

This is a digital design project, so the main ‘supplies’ are software tools rather than physical materials. With that being said, I mainly used Tinkercad for designing this project, as it has the quickest and most flexible 3D image creation services. I created the human and axe in Blender.

Where I live, winters get really cold. Some days you can see people standing at bus stops, sitting on benches, or walking through parking lots for hours with light jackets, no gloves, or just a thin blanket. It’s not just uncomfortable—it’s actually dangerous when the temperature drops.

That JAMA study I mentioned in the intro found that cold‑related deaths in the U.S. have more than doubled since 1999, with over 40,000 people dying from cold. Seeing that, and noticing people in my own area struggling to stay warm, made me ask a simple question: if we can’t control the weather, how can we at least make it easier for people to get heat? That’s where the idea for the Community Woodshed started.

Once I understood the problem, I wanted to come up with something simple that a regular person or small group could actually build. I can’t fix housing or change the weather, but I can design a small project that helps people stay warm.

I decided to focus on one basic thing: firewood. If someone has access to a wood stove, fire pit, or shared warming area, they still need fuel. So I started designing a Community Woodshed—a shared shed where people can store and pick up firewood. The idea is that people who have extra wood can drop some off, other people can volunteer to cut wood from a nearby forest, and people who need wood can take some, no questions asked.

In the next steps, I’ll walk through how I designed the woodshed, what tools and software I used, and how it could work in a real community.

To design it, I first made the shed, wood, and axes as 3D models in Blender. Then I imported those models into Tinkercad and arranged everything into one scene, placing the shed, stacking the wood, and positioning the axes where I wanted them. This setup let me quickly move things around, test different sizes, and try out a few layouts to see what looked best. Using Blender and Tinkercad together helped me picture how the Community Woodshed could work in real life before anyone actually builds it.

Models available for free here

In real life, a Community Woodshed could be placed in a spot that is easy to reach and safe, like near a library, community center, church, or bus stop, while also near trees or a source of wood. It should be somewhere people can get to on foot or by public transportation, and where volunteers can safely drop off and stack wood.

The shed would be used by three main groups of people: those who need wood, those who have extra wood, and volunteers. Anyone who needs wood could take some without signing up or explaining their situation. People who have extra firewood could drop it off, and volunteers could help cut, split, and stack it so it’s ready to burn.

A Community Woodshed doesn’t solve homelessness or replace permanent housing, but it can still help. On very cold days, having free access to dry firewood could help someone stay warm and reduce their risk of cold-related illness. The goal is to give people one more way to stay safe in dangerous winter weather.

The Community Woodshed is a simple idea to help people stay warm during dangerous winter weather. By creating a shared place where anyone can drop off or pick up firewood, it gives communities a practical way to support people who don’t always have steady heat or safe shelter. Instead of trying to solve everything at once, this project focuses on one basic need: access to fuel.

Using Blender and Tinkercad, I designed a small, raised shed that keeps wood dry and easy to reach. In real life, a structure like this could be built near a community center, library, or bus stop and maintained by volunteers and neighbors who want to help. People who need wood could take some with no questions asked, and people with extra could give what they can.

This project doesn’t fix homelessness or replace long-term solutions, but it shows how a simple design can still make a difference. My goal with the Community Woodshed is to spark ideas about how communities can share resources, look out for each other, and make cold winters a little safer for everyone.

Thanks to my awesome English teacher for reviewing my writing and helping me make this project clearer and easier to read.

Thanks to Autodesk for Tinkercad, which, in my opinion, is the best easy-to-use 3D modeling software for quickly building and arranging designs.

Thanks to Blender for the realistic wood models and splinters (ouch) that helped bring this scene to life.

You can view the full Tinkercad project here.

Don’t get too cold!

– James F

Screenshots taken during creation and hanging out in the Project Library.