What to build with wooden pallets?

[Jason White]

So my local garden center has a whole bunch of wooden pallets with a big "free" sign on them. Not sure what type of wood they're made of and I'm sure they're in pretty rough shape.

Other than firewood, are these good for anything?

Jason

[David Epperson]

I've seen some with some very striking grain and figure in them. Most are made either from a cheaper wood (trash tree or such) or material that for one reason or another didn't make the grade for more marketable material. Other than not knowing if it's oak ,gum, or whatever, it should be OK. After all what have you got to lose - it's free.

[Jason King]

You'd be surprised at what you can do with pallet wood

http://namm.harmony-central.com/SNAMM00/Content/Taylor_Guitars/PR/Pallet-sm.jpg

[Tim Malyszko]

Be careful about metal in them. Other than that, it can be okay free wood.

[Lee Schierer]

Around here most pallet wood is oak and it is not dried. It might be free wood, but you get what you paid for. I would highly recommend a metal detector before running any through your saws or planer.

[J. Z. Guest]

You can plan on throwing out the one-by cross boards.

Then, take the thicker board and look for any nails, staples, etc. Then, put on your 40 or 60 grit sanding belt on your belt sander and give 'er the once over to remove sand & rocks that might've been mashed into the wood.

I made something out of pallet wood once. Wound up nicking the hell out of my planer & jointer knives. It was NOT worth it.

[David DeCristoforo]

If you have enough, you can make a cool fort....

YM

[Chris Barnett]

Just finished making thirteen birdhouses from the pallets on which my table and band saws, and lathe arrived. Just could not toss all that clear lumber. Not suitable for much else since it is all softwood, except one beautiful brown piece that is twice the weight as fir, and cuts like a dream. Used the little available to make a few fence attachments for miter gauges on my saws. Will be sending sample to determine species. Would like to find more of this wood somewhere.

[Karl Brogger]

What to build with wooden pallets?

A nice warm fire. :)

[Lars Thomas]

It's not worth the price.

[Matt Ocel]

Hey Carl I'm up here in Farmington and I'm with you, they make for a great bonfire. Other than that I wouldn't put any of my blades or knifes near that stuff.

[Karl Brogger]

Matt- Time to get some more pallets. We're supposed to get 6-8 inches of the white fluffy stuff tomorrow. YUCK! Isn't it supposed to be spring soon?

[Dave Lehnert]

I run a retail garden center and sell my pallets. I have a hard time keeping them. The "pallet pirates" come at night and take them. I know guys that make a living buying used pallets and resell them.

[Nancy Laird]

A lot of pallets for machines that come in from the Orient are some very nice Philippine mahogany or other exotics (to us) that are trash wood (to them). You can make almost anything with decent pallet wood - boxes (jewelry, keepsake, etc.) come to mind, as do small tables, children's furniture (table and chairs). You can make the same things with pallet wood that you can with wood you buy at the lumber yard. Yes, some of it isn't worth messing with, but you have to look at it good, and make sure it isn't full of metal. You'd be surprised what you might find under a layer of dirt and/or oil.

Nancy

[Jack Vines]

BTDTNA - One must be very poor and very desperate to wrest lumber from pallets:

1. Most pallets are assembled with ring nails, which are designed to be impossible to remove. For the bird houses mentioned, it is possible to cut the 1x slats out of the middles with some hope of success. The 2x and 4x will almost always contain hidden nails.
2. Most pallets are built from the lowest grade of lumber. If the lumber were suitable for projects or furniture, it would be priced accordingly.
3. It is nearly impossible to get all the nails, staples, brads and trash out of pallet lumber. The cost of ruining one good carbide blade has to be factored in to the savings. Think about ruining a saw blade, planer blades, jointer blades, shaper cutters. Hitting a nail with a router blade scares me.

thnx, jack vines

[Peter Quinn]

I heard a statistic on NPR the other day that 40% of the worlds annual hardwood harvest is used for shipping crates and pallets. Some of it is not so bad though I doubt much is at the prime end of the scale. At the flooring mill I worked at the lumber packs arrived separated by 4"X4"X48" blocking to accommodate fork lifts. They were strapped to the packs so were always KD (I checked them).

I found SA mahogany, bloodwood, sapele, jatoba, liginum vitae, oak, cherry, walnut...majority were #2 common poplar junk. We got pallets occasionally made of QSWO, boy those staples and ring nails are a bugger. Most of the pallets were southern yellow pine or poplar with occasional oak cross members.

Its cool to recycle pallets but you do have rocks, nails, mold and other hazards to deal with. And more often than not the wood isn't of much use, but keep your eyes open and you may find some worth working for.

[Rick Levine]

Some pallets are useable. I got a couple of decent ones from where I used to work that were used to ship a safe and some heavy refrigerators. They were oak. Also, Norm used some to make this:

http://www.newyankee.com/getproduct.php?404

[Mike Heidrick]

It is funny you mention this. The farmer behind me has a pile of them at the end of my property for burning latter this spring. I went out with my forks and picked up 7 of the heavy duty ones. Not for WW but to store my tractor 3pt implements on to keep them off the ground during the winter. Some of them said IBM Z series on them and were used to ship the big mainframes IBM has. Looked out back today and there looks to be more of them so I will go back and check them out again tomorrow.

[Matt Crew]

My wife had requested that I make benches for her dolls that she collects, so I've begun to make them from pallet material that I had gotten from work.
One is glued up but the other two are set together.
The first picture is of a piece of what I thought was ash before I milled it up, but now I'm not really sure. Maybe some one else could tell.
Then a nice piece of qsro.
I think pallets are great for small projects, but you need to use a metal detector.

[jim oakes]

Some pallets are useable. I got a couple of decent ones from where I used to work that were used to ship a safe and some heavy refrigerators. They were oak. Also, Norm used some to make this:

http://www.newyankee.com/getproduct.php?404

You could grind them up and make paper. Then print plans on the paper, sell the plans and get rich and famous like Norm!

Actually back when I had more time than money around 1970 ,I laminated pallet wood into 3x3's and made some glass top parsons tables out of them. I got alot of money for them.
Well,they were covered with Brazilian Rosewood veneer!

Today I might get more money for them if I left off the veneer and called them "green".

[fRED mCnEILL]

In my business I get a pallet every week from Coke. 10 years ago or so, when I first started woodworking I cut up one of these pallets and got the most beautiful peice of maple. I thought I had found the "motherlode" and would have a constant supply of nice wood. But the next few I cut up had no useable wood in them at all. Haven't used one since except as a "pallet"

Fred Mc.

[Rob Will]

I would "season" those pallets outside until they become compost. Then, plant a nice walnut or cherry on that spot. In about 50 years, you can make something really nice.:D

Just kidding but I don't think it is worth it.

Rob

[Daniel Shnitka]

Given the length between the outside and middle or centre support you have enough usable wood without pulling a nail. I have made made beer cases for the cermaic top beer bottles from the companies like Grolsch or Fischer. A dozen bottles to a case.
Using a inexpensive carbide blade in your "skill" saw cut next to the nails. Wear gloves goggles and ear protection when doing the cutting. You will be surprised how quickly you can have a useable supply of nail free wood albeit short lengths 17", 18" and 19" lengths.

[Sam Yerardi]

I wouldn't hesitate to use pallet wood. I've used it on several occasions and while it is usually a tremendous amount of work to get the wood to a usable point, more often than not it has been worth it for me. I've gotten white oak, red oak, cherry, sycamore, hickory, and some types I still can't identify... And I've picked up some Japanese crates that had wood I'd never seen before (and don't know what it is). One pallet had 3" x 6" x 6' beams across the bottom that was a wood similar to pine but was unique. No idea what it is. Pallets are a lot of work (especially the oak pallets) but can prove to be a real treasure trove. On a few pieces I had to use a sledge hammer, crowbar, and a spud bar to break some of it up but most of it came apart without too much trouble. And yes, watch out for nails...

[Joe Unni]

I made a shoji lantern some time ago with oak from a pallet. You can check it out here.

http://sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=55157&highlight=shoji

I actually found it kind of fun to figure out what to make once I had the pallet and other reclaimed materials on hand.

-joe

[Doug Shepard]

Just sticker it for a while and make sure it's dry first (or check it with a moisture meter). I've made a few shop things out of pallet wood and didn't have any problems. My uncle didn't have as good luck with some he got that was obviously pretty green. He made some end table tops that eventually cracked and split so bad he had to toss them and remake the tops.

[Jeff Mohr]

Given the length between the outside and middle or centre support you have enough usable wood without pulling a nail. I have made made beer cases for the cermaic top beer bottles from the companies like Grolsch or Fischer. A dozen bottles to a case.
Using a inexpensive carbide blade in your "skill" saw cut next to the nails. Wear gloves goggles and ear protection when doing the cutting. You will be surprised how quickly you can have a useable supply of nail free wood albeit short lengths 17", 18" and 19" lengths.


Yep...I've done that and found some real nice wood. Currently working on some white oak I got from one pallet. Cutting the pallet like stated above does give you nail free pieces perfect for small projects and the time it takes to zip through the wood is not too bad. Plus, you still get the leftovers for firewood!

[Tim Thomas]

Lets say that you wanted a pearl necklace. To satisfy that desire you have several basic options: (1) Go to a jewelry store and buy the pearls, (2) Search through estate sales, garage sales, pawn shops, etc. to find a good deal, (3) Get some diving gear, travel to a place that has a lot of oysters and dive for hundreds of them in the hopes that you find enough pearls to make the necklace.

If option number 3 sounds like it would be the most fun to you (and it does to me) then you will probably enjoy the hunt for usable wood in pallets, and the subsequent work that is required to clean up that wood. If you just want to get some inexpensive wood, I think there are a lot easier ways to do it (like option 2). And if you don't enjoy hunting for your wood at all and would rather just get out in the shop and make what you want right away, with the best quality wood you can get your hands on, then option 1 is what will make you the happiest.

I've done all of these things. I've bought wood from a nice lumber yard, picked up some great cherry at a garage sale, and just yesterday I got a whole bunch of oak, pine and poplar pieces by cutting up some heavy duty pallets that Mark Springer was nice enough to tell me about. I actually enjoy all of these methods for different reasons, but I am certainly sympathetic to those folks who don't want to spend time sifting through pallets. It is a lot of work, but I feel an amount of satisfaction out of it that I don't get from buying lumber. It just feels like I'm "rescuing" the wood and it makes for a cooler backstory to whatever projects I make.

[Mike Heidrick]

Food for thought for this Monday morning. Chances are, depending on what you build with it, the pallet may be serving a better purpose being a pallet than wood in your project. Why not just let it do its utility job of being the middlewood between a heavy object and a machine that can lift heavy objects. Trying to repurpose a pallet is only done on purpose.

[David Epperson]

This is exactly why HF sells so many 7-1/4" carbide tipped blades for $2.97 ea. So you hit a nail or three - just keeps the edge on the blade. :D

[Tim Thomas]

Food for thought for this Monday morning. Chances are, depending on what you build with it, the pallet may be serving a better purpose being a pallet than wood in your project. Why not just let it do its utility job of being the middlewood between a heavy object and a machine that can lift heavy objects. Trying to repurpose a pallet is only done on purpose.

I agree with this if the pallet is going to be recycled and reused, and many are, but a lot of them are just thrown away or burned up. I would guess the economics of reusing pallets does not work out in a lot of cases and it is far cheaper for companies to make new pallets. Plus pallets take a lot of abuse and when they finally break I doubt they are repaired very often. One busted slat could make a pallet useless for supporting heavy objects, but there could still be usable wood in it. I wouldn't take pallets that were going to be reused, but if they are destined for the landfill or the burn pile I'm pretty certain that I can repurpose them in a way that is more noble than garbage or ashes.

I actually have some experience with this from a summer job I had years ago as a stock-person at Phar-Mor. All of our merchandise came in stacked on standard small pallets. After we took the full pallets off the truck, we put the "empties" from the previous week back on the truck to go back to the distribution center. When we took the merchandise off the full pallets we gave the emptied pallet a once over to see if it still looked usable. Good pallets were stacked on the loading dock to be reused, broken pallets were leaned against the dumpster.

I guess what I'm saying is that a pallet can have more than one life. It can be used and reused as a pallet until it can't serve that purpose anymore, and then it either becomes waste or some sadist like myself can try to salvage scraps of wood from it. :)

[Keith Beck]

A lot of pallets for machines that come in from the Orient are some very nice Philippine mahogany or other exotics (to us) that are trash wood (to them).

I actually saw some pallets at one of the Borgs a couple of weeks ago that were used to ship some Luan that were made out of some pretty decent looking Mahogany.

Keith

[Matt Meiser]

Actually there is at least two companies who's primary business is pallet reuse. Take a look the next time you are in a store. The ones painted blue and the ones painted red are owned by pallet pooling companies. Someone like Costco or Walmart pays them for X number of pallets. When the pallets come back to the distribution center, the owner inspects the pallets, puts the good ones back into service and sends the broken ones for repair.

(So don't use the blue and red pallets to build anything as they actually belong to someone who wants them back.)

[Matt Meiser]

I actually saw some pallets at one of the Borgs a couple of weeks ago that were used to ship some Luan that were made out of some pretty decent looking Mahogany.

Keith

In that case, the pallet was probably nicer than the stuff they were trying to sell off of it.

[David DeCristoforo]

I had a friend who heated his house with a wood stove. He was a great scavenger and one day he came home with a flatbed truck loaded with old oak pallets he had been given for the hauling. He thought he had scored some good free firewood (he was not a woodworker!). He set about dismantling the pallets with a crowbar and a hammer. The first thing that happened when he tried to pry a board loose was that the hammer handle snapped. So the crowbar was obviously going to be the tool of choice. But, try as he might, he could not get the ring shank nails the pallets were put together with to give up their grip. So then he got out the skillsaw. The first blade nearly melted before he was through the first board. This was, apparently, some kind of mutant oak. Time for the chain saw. Ultimately, after repeated sharpenings of the chain, the pallets were reduced to stove sized pieces. As the wood was burned, the stove's ash pan would fill with the nails which remained imbedded in the wood.

Here's the funny part. His house was part of an old farm workshop area and the driveway was littered with nails from years of work. He used to get a lot of flat tires from all the nails so he had a deal with his daughter and her friends that he would pay a nickel for every nail they picked up out of the driveway. The kids were always coming in with a handful of nails and he would give them a few bucks. But one day they came in with a big coffee can full of nails and he was getting stuck for a pretty hefty payoff. Later they came back with another can full and suddenly he was thinking "Wait a minute". Then he realized that the kids had discovered the ash pile where he had been dumping the dross from burning the nail laden pallet wood. In the end, he figured that was the most expensive firewood he ever got for free!

YM

[Ben Cadotte]

Good hardwood pallets were worth $4 to redi-mix supliers. Worked at a lumber yard in college. For every pallet of concrete product we had to give a $10 deposit on the pallets. When the truck left he would take the empties back. Plus $4 for every pallet we added that was not originally a concrete suplier pallet. So thats why you see or hear about pallet pirates.

Up north they have the outdoor wood fired boilers for heating. I see one guy who has been heating his house the entire winter with pallets and junk wood.

[Craig D Peltier]

I have a friend in seatttle who pulls palletts from import companies. He's found tons of high end wood. Even ebony. He cleans the pieces up and resells them.
He just knows where to go after all these years doing it.

[Chris Stolicky]

This is exactly why HF sells so many 7-1/4" carbide tipped blades for $2.97 ea. So you hit a nail or three - just keeps the edge on the blade. :D

There was a brief article in a mag recently (Wood?) about a guy that ended up with a carbide tooth in his hand because he was sawing reclaimed wood. Needless to say, he hit a nail that he did not see. If you use reclaimed wood, be careful.

Yeah, you can buy some cheap blades, but ER trips are not cheap nor fun. Neither is the pain and time away from the shop.

Hey, with heating fuel prices these days, use them to keep warm and roast marshmellows! :)

[jim oakes]

This may not work for the ringshank nails in pallets,however for other lumber reuse it looks a great tool.

The video they have is very impressive!

http://www.nailkicker.com/ (http://www.nailkicker.com/)

[Jacob Reverb]

My brother used to live near a large pallet factory/mill in Pennsylvania, and we used to go and pick through their "scrap" piles if we were nearby and bored. You'd be surprised at some of the beautiful cherry, white oak, ash, etc., that they threw away!