27 Replies

I have dismantled 2 palettes so far. I got them for free from work. We get a lot of them and those 2 looked better than most. I still have another 3 I left at work for later.
It is painful to dismantle the pallets. The first one I removed every nail and got longer boards.
The second one I pulled my jigsaw and cut between the support and got shorter runs.
I use them for hidden elements in project and also for trying piece for router setup and such.

I was kind of hoping someone would jump in and say, “look at all these beautiful things I made with pallets!” Hehe… I guess I’ll muddle through the mess I started and see what I can get out of it. :-)

I have found the preparation work to be more than I bargained for: also, there is an ongoing concern about getting all of the nails out. I’ve ruined both jointer knives and miter saw blades, thinking that I have all of the nails, only to find one that the wood has obscured.
The wood selection is another issue – it used to be that virtually all pallets were oak; recently, I’m seeing more poplar and pine.
MJCD

Thanks. I guess that’s more or less the last word on the issue and pretty much what I was thinking too, now that I already dived in head first. I guess the garbage man is not going to be too happy with me on Tuesday morning.

The other thing is that these pallets are covered in black dust from warehouses. Nasty stuff. I’ll work with what I have but I don’t think I’ll be doing this again.

I use a fair amount of pallets as I have the time, and also I am into the recycling aspect of it all.
I just posted a box made from pallet-wood.

I just looked at it. Very nice.

4 pallets and about 6 hours of work (mostly nail pulling) yielded this musk lumber.

I doubt I will be doing this again but I’m going to do my best to make a few nice things with the lumber I have.

They tend to make to top slate thinner these days…

I made a grand champion award winning mirror-shelf-coatrack combination. I have to do some repairs to it, but it remains one of my favorite. It’s from reclaimed pallet wood.

It takes a bit if effort to reclaim wood, but there are some bargains out there that can be turned into high end product. I use some oak from wine vats, which has a lot of character.

Spiral nails are evil. Crow bars just pop their heads. My nail puller, because of its leverage and rocking motion, does well for their removal.

Nice. Do the wine barrel projects retain any of the color from the wine?

Use some caution with pallets, some have been soaked with chemicals you don’t want to be ingesting. If there is any indication of staining, don’t use it.

There seem to be different grades of pallets as I’ve seen some with much thicker slat material. It is a lot of work, but the results can be worthwhile. Projects utilizing reclaimed/repurposed wood are becoming more popular. I have several clients that list reclaimed wood as a requirement.

The wine fermenting slats have a beautiful red-ish tint, which goes as deep as an inch and a half into the wood. It’s random and fades in and out, so makes for a nice effect.

Bill’s right on the treatment, but, as he indicates, it should be obvious, until the wood is nearly not worth chasing.

I note the value of pallets change from place to place. For us Pacific Northwtners, pallets from the east offer a lot of oak, for example. Others offer up a lot of poplar.

When in doubt as to if staples or nails have been completely removed, I resort to my sanders. Other than having to avoid sparks in a vacuum/collector, there is no danger of damage to blades.

If you’re gonna work with pallets, or any reclaimed wood for that matter, go ahead and invest in a metal detector. I’ve used one of these for quite some time now (http://www.harborfreight.com/9-volt-metal-detector-wand-94138.html) and have been surprised at how well it works despite the fact it came from Harbor Freight.

I work with reclaimed wood quite a bit and using a metal detector is an absolute necessity. It only takes one hit on a blade, planer or jointer knife to pay for itself, not to mention the potential for shrapnel.

That’s a great idea, Bill. I don’t plan on any work with this stuff for at least a few weeks so I definitely will head over to HF or look on amazon.

I mentioned this to a friend at work and he told me he once picked up some south american pallets made out of Brazilian cherry. Nice find.

God bless Amazon. Even cheaper than harbor freight and good reviews to boot: http://www.amazon.com/American-Hawks-Detector-LIFETIME-WARRANTY/dp/B000EVIEEY/ref=cm_wl_huc_item

One reviewer said to use the wand to find the nail and narrow down the location, then use a magnet to pinpoint the location. There’s a good idea.

This : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iszNusNVJ2k popped up on Youtube for me today. It seems to have some good ideas in it.

Brian, let me know how well that works.

Some great ideas there. Especially knocking the nail IN to break the bond. I’ll have to remember that one.

Some great info in that video Wolf&Rabbit.

It may sound odd, but use a pair of vise grips below the nail heads then use your pry bar under the vise grips. make sure your vise grips are gripped tightly. i have done this on many pallets. otherwise the heads like to pop off, then they can be almost impossible to remove.

When I first started working I got excited by all the posts I saw online about people using pallets and having a seemingly endless free source of wood…and being hip and eco-friendly and saving the forests at the same time. Fast forward to the day that I actually got a pallet and spent an afternoon disassembling it and realizing that a)there was not a lot of usable wood except for small projects and b)I could have spent the afternoon woodworking instead of trying to pull nails out of boards. Today I still use pallets…as firewood; they burn great and give me an excuse to use my chainsaw to cut them.

Brian,
I bought a hand held metal detector from Ebay…it is on par with the HF. It works ok, then I had the opportunity to get a better one when our local courthouse replaced theirs. The one from the courthouse worked much better on 2-3 inch stock but really did not improve the results on 1" and smaller stock. If you have a planer that is a little bigger, those blades are huge money, and I have gone to checking EVERYTHING I plane. I nicked the blades on a piece of walnut from a lumber yard. Blades for my Jet are 150.00 a set…..I believe that you should do it on all wood you use. If I remember right, the ebay wand was 35.00…..
Mike

Since you wanted to see a few things done with pallets, here goes:

Those are nice. Coincidentally, my cousin sent me some arts and crafts style ideas last night. One was a large wall clock that I’m thinking about making.

Moke, I picked up a metal detector from amazon for about $30. It works well and is also a great stud finder.

things I found in a pile of pallets lol