Basement Plumbing

We're in the process of finishing our basement, the floor is half torn up, and this weekend we started plumbing. We rented a chain pipe cutter for cast iron on the weekend, and cut in to the pipe in 2 places. It was really hard work cutting the pipe, we moved the cutter back and forth, and kept tightening. It seemed that the pipe didn't want to break. Finally we just tightened it with a rachet, and heard the telltale snap. We'd already preassembled the ABS pipe to tie in, and that part went pretty smoothly, one of the cuts wasn't so straight, but we had enough room with the rubber adapter to cover that up. Next is digging all the trenches. I started it, but after putting 4 or 5 wheelbarrow loads on the driveway, I decided to wait until I get a bin to put the dirt in.
We got a bunch of free lumber on Saturday as well. My boss bought a house that has some used forming lumber on it; so I got 5 sheets of plywood, and a bunch of 2'x4's that we had to cut to 14' to fit in the truck. I may be going back next weekend for more plywood, who knows. The garage is getting full though, so there isn't much room. Plus I don't know what we'd do with a bunch of plywood anyways. I was thinking of using it to make the cripple walls in the basement in to shear walls. We're going to be connecting the sill plate to the foundation wall, with wedge bolts. Some plywood screwed to the walls, would make them that much stronger. I've heard that's where houses fail during earthquakes, the cripple walls on the basement foundation.