Disassembling pallets

[Jon Wilson]

Found a decent source for free pallets so I thought I'd give it a go at making some stuff with the reclaimed wood off the pallets.

Aside from buying one of the expensive pallet busters, how do you take them apart?

Any tips? Secrets?

from what I've gathered thus far it isn't exactly the easiest of tasks but to end up with some usable FREE lumber I can put a little effort into the dismantling.

TIA

[Lornie McCullough]

Make one of these:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkKFGIjPSvI

Seems kinda clever.

Lornie

[Mark Wooden]

Hats off to Izzy, great advice and purpose!

[Mort Stevens]

I had some equipment delivered and they left it on the pallet... after about 10 minutes and only removing 3 nails I thought I'd just cut the pieces off at the cross member, after throwing away the pieces that were cracked or had gravel imbedded in them and was left with about 8 or 10 pieces 1/2" thick, 2-1/2" wide and 14" long. Even for free it isn't worth the effort.

[Dave Zellers]

They are good firewood.

[Harold Burrell]

sawzall......

[Mike Henderson]

Most pallets are made with some really awful wood.

Mike

[Kevin Bourque]

Pallets are great firewood for outdoor wood burners, but not much good for anything else.

PS. I'm surprised Festool doesn't make a specialized pallet deconstruction tool.

[Roy Harding]

I used to work in an industrial park - LOTS of pallets laying around. The only GOOD ones were european in origin. The rest were, as others have noted, good for firewood.

[Alden Miller]

I second the sawzall approach.

The only ones I have found worth any effort are from the Kubota tractor dealer. Their pallets are usually mahogany. You only end up with small pieces but if you aren't making large projects you can find some decent wood.

-Alden

[Chris Fournier]

Pallets get slid and ground around in gravel yards, dirty warehouse floors and have nasty stuff stacked on them. The free wood they offer will likely cost you tonnes in dulled, chipped cutting tools and the odd surprise while machining. Look for a wholesale source of lumber in your area and you'll be further ahead.

[Mike Wilkins]

You can sometimes find some tasty timbers lurking inside of a pallet, but the effort to get it out will often destroy the wood. Pallet manufacturers are not concerned with looks, just utility. The usual demolition tools will work, although one of the thinner pry bars will do the least damage. Be prepared to use some muscle, as they usually use screw-shank nails to assemble them. Then you have to deal with the dirt and debris, neither of which is kind to jointer and planer blades.
But I have been able to find some nice looking quarter-sawn oak, and some reddish colored wood from Indonesia, formerly some machinery crates. I once heard of a story of a pig farmer in south Georgia who had a pig pen made of Teak, which he rescued from some machinery pallets at work. Happy hunting.

[Charles Wiggins]

I like Lornie's post. Very clever idea.
I have a Wonderbar (http://www.homedepot.com/p/Stanley-12-in-Wonder-Bar-55-515K/100093815#) and a Super Wonderbar (http://www.homedepot.com/p/Stanley-15-1-2-in-Super-Wonder-Bar-Pry-Bar-55-525/100067428#) that work OK, but nothing like Izzie's Pallet Pal.

[Prashun Patel]

Beware of pallets. I have access to a lot of them.

They contain many hidden nails.
They are almost always under 3/4" thick.
You don't know if they've been treated.
If you're lucky to get a nice oak or maple pallet, it have a piece or two that's usable.

The few projects I did from them required laminations. It's a lot of milling and hard labor to get to the fun part.

YMMV, but I never use pallets any more. There's one exception: if you mail order any lumber, a couple places will use scraps of their own hard wood to make their own pallets. I've gotten some nice pieces of sycamore this way.

[Joe Hillmann]

I make tons of items out of pallet boards, I welded up a pallet wrecking bar similar the the video in the first response. It only worked on pallets with straight nails which are uncommon. If I used it on pallets with twist nails the nail heads would pull through and split the boards.

If I want short pieces I just use a circular saw and cut between the stringers and end up with about 30 14" long pieces which is great for what I do.

If I want longer pieces I use the pry bar I made and just loosen up the boards just enough to get a sawsall blade between the boards and stringers then cut the nails off.

The items I build out of pallets are the same things I would build out of rustic barn boards so I usually don't even remove the cut off nail heads from the boards. I also wouldn't run a pallet board through my planer or use an expensive saw blade on them.

[Myk Rian]

Make one of these:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkKFGIjPSvI

Seems kinda clever.

Lornie
Look at this one @ 2:11. Damned near cut his fingers off.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIRK1lsliSk

[John Sanford]

Free pallets can be good. Free blocking from a firm involved in shipping using flatbeds, flatcars, etc is even better. 6-10' pieces of 3x3 up to 4x6 material, often hardwoods, often mystery wood.

[Tom Walz]

http://www.popularmechanics.com/home/reviews/hand-tools/4274987

I went looking for a slam hammer - tool #1 called something else.

Saw other cool tools I had never seen before so decided to share.

P.S. I don't know what happened to my slam hammer but I don't miss it very much.

[Mike Olson]

I pretty much always get rid of the 3 - 4 boards on the bottom of pallets as others have mentioned they are always slid around on gravel, dirt, and who knows what else, "many years ago I operated a forklift in a door mfr so I have seen it and done it myself"

I mostly use the thin boards since they are a nice thickness for smaller projects so I use a long sawsall blade and saw between the thick members and the thin stuff. once I cut off both outside thick pieces I can usually twist the boards a bit to cut the nails on the center piece.

doing it this way, you can't get the nails out of the thick boards since they will be cut flush, but can easily pop the heads out of the thin boards.

a few years ago when I started using Pallet wood, I was using my circular saw and cutting the thin boards off right where they meet the thick boards. This gave me lots of short pieces and I was able to knock out the thin strips left on the thick boards so I could get to the nails. But, I still could only get 1/2 of the nails out as they usually broke off. Those twist nails driven into solid Maple, Oak, and Mahogany just don't come out.

[Steve Peterson]

I don't think the wood is good enough quality to justify the risk of gravel, nails, or chemical treatment on the wood. However, I think the best way would be to cut next to the nails and be happy with ~20" long pieces of wood.

Most pallets I see are junk wood anyway. I get them when buying stove pellets. They load a pallet into the truck using a forklift. I go home and empty it, then return the pallet when I go back to get another ton. One time gave me an oak pallet. I returned it and somebody else took it from the stack of pallets really quickly. The junk pallets are never taken.

Steve

[Mike Olson]

Free pallets can be good. Free blocking from a firm involved in shipping using flatbeds, flatcars, etc is even better. 6-10' pieces of 3x3 up to 4x6 material, often hardwoods, often mystery wood.
I also found that places that fix heavy machinery like a CAT will have some crazy thick pieces as all parts they receive will be shipped on a HEAVY DUTY pallet and will only be used that one time. I built 5 - 3' x 6' raised garden beds this year out of 1" thick oak sides and 3"x5" oak posts.

[Rod Sheridan]

Pallets are great firewood for outdoor wood burners, but not much good for anything else.

PS. I'm surprised Festool doesn't make a specialized pallet deconstruction tool.

They do, they just market them as Harbour Freight tools.