hi all
i posted a question on here a few days ago about the cheapest wood i could use for patio furniture and some of you recommended pallet wood. well, i found a bunch of places around town that had free pallets and brought some home on the weekend. i failed to realize just how difficult it would be to take these apart. i realize i could just cut out the sections of wood i want to use, but i'm trying to keep the boards as long as possible. anybody find a easy way to take these apart?
tks
Garrett-Wade is stocking a nail puller model 20B03.01 for 35 bucks. My Dad had one of those, or a very similar tool--they used to be available at hardware stores before these newfangled "catspaw" things became the fad. Never saw a nail it couldn't move as long as there was enough clearance to pull the handle out all the way and put your back into it. Does damage the wood some though. They've also got a set of that one and a smaller model for 4 bucks more--20B03.10 is the set.
Someone used to post here about that. Her husband was in the used pallet business. He used a 2 x 4 to pry them so he had a lot of leverage.
Google is your friend!
Quick summary: don't bother trying. Too much work for too little wood.
--Cheers! Duke
Chain saw is the fastest and easiest method in my opinion. Everything else takes too much time and effort.
Since a lot of them are assebled with VERY large staples, you will have little to no luck getting them apart easily.
I would use a circular saw with a decent blade and a recip saw for the rally nasty ones.
Dica wrote:
That's the kicker. The pallets I've taken apart used spiral shank nails and once I *got* them out the surrounding wood was so beat up that I ended up cutting the pieces down. If I had used a saw in the first place to just harvest the sections between the fasteners I'd have been way ahead of the game in time and effort.
I used a hole saw just larger than the diameter of the nail head, or a center punch on the nail head, drill the head off leaving the top boards intact and the body of the nails to pry out. This is the "price" you pay for "free" pallets. Can you spell t-e-d-i-o-u-s? Pat- who just disassembled pallets made out of Balsa!!!
On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 09:19:02 -0400, "J. Clarke" wrote:
\ Everyone is acting like this is an impossible task. Assuming you have some time and enjoy things like this to save a buck and be able to say that wood was free, just take your time and work them apart. I have built quite a few items (including most of my shop cabinetes) from pallet wood. Most was some kind of South American pine (pinkish heartwood) but I have salvaged some hardwood plywood (currently residing in a couple of shop cabinets), various tropicals, some maple and some oak. The oak was the least worth the effort both because it was a bear to take apart and the wood was usually less than great. I have mostly used claw hammers and a small (damned small) pry bar. There were a couple of times that getting my splitting wedge between a couple of boards and whacking it a few times proved worthwhile. I should invest in a bigger prybar though. You can minimize pry bar damage to the wood by using scraps to take the brunt of the contact. Beyond that, expect to either enjoy the ambience of the nail holes (which is what I usually do) or get a good set of plug cutters as trying to cut around all the nail holes means never having wood bigger than 12" long or so. As I sit here in my office typing this I am looking at a couple of 30" x 24" picture frames on my wall made from pallet oak. They show the nail holes in all their glory with the black discoloration intact along with some worm holes and trails, framing a couple of old western scene prints. Just the right touch of rustic while still being fully sanded, finished and shellaced. I am not into barnwood or rough wood rustic, but a couple of nail holes or wormholes can give an interesting look in the right situation.
Dave Hall
IMHO, pallet wood is worthless. Maybe your pallets are better made. Packing crates, now you're talking, but I've never seen a pallet useful for anything more than a rabbit hutch.
I'd suggest dismantling them with a big tree-felling crosscut saw (a sharp one) which is what I use. Second to that would be a garden bow saw, which is much the same but easier to buy new. The easiest is a big reciprocating saw.
Don't use a chainsaw. One day you _will_ hit a nail.
I wouldn't bother dismantling by pulling nails. There are too many nail holes in a small space and the timber is hardly usable past this mess. If you must dismantle them, then I use a simple flat crowbar (a Stanley Wonderbar is worth having in the toolbag). I've never had much luck with a floorboard nail puller on pallets - the sort with a "parrot beak" and a slide hammer to drive the jaws beneath the wood - but they're about the best for direct-pull on nailheads.
This side of the pond they seem to be pretty decent. Sometimes better than the quality of the goods shipped on them.
Another interesting source, if you can find it, is the wooden floors from old railroad cars. A friend scored a massive amount of Mahogany for next to nothing from an old car. Beat up, but after a couple trips through the planer a marvelous gloat.
Lately, I've been dismantling pallets to build a trellis. I've found some success by cutting the nails with a reciprocating saw and then punching out the pieces with a thin drift punch. This works OK on the 6, 8 and 10d nails. The smaller ones ya just gotta pull.
Bill Leonhardt
Lobby Dosser wrote in news:9SU8e.19290$H_5.1783@trnddc01:
You can buy that grade of utility flooring from the right suppliers at pretty cheap prices, without having it subjected to the rigors of freight car use and abuse.
But what resource are we trying to save here? It's not like I have unlimited funds, but my back doesn't have unlimited strength anymore, and fuel for the truck is approaching European price points, without European operating economies...
Would you turn any of that 'mahogany' on your lathe?
Patriarch
I've turned some incredible junk on my lathe. :o)
Lobby Dosser wrote in news:AwV8e.46409 $9i7.25427@trnddc04:
I was thinking of the stuff that leaked from the railway frieght over the years.
I've turned some real junk, too, and have only been at it a few months. ;-)
Fast learner!
The easiest way I have found to dismantle pallets is to stack a dozen or so up, pour on a cup of gasoline, and toss in a match. The pallets will self dismantle in 20 minutes or so. It is fun to watch too.
Joe
It varies, depending on what they were made for in the first place. Standard-sized pallets tend to be cr*p (or beat to hell from use), but custom-made ones are sometimes pretty good. It pays to be selective.
I've heard that the recyclers only want the standard-sized pallets and scrap the ones that are odd sizes-- exactly the ones that might (or might not) have some good wood in them.
I work for a printing company, and some of the pallets that are used to deliver paper look pretty good. We usually use them to ship out the finished jobs, though. The bad ones sometimes fall apart before we can use them.
Run them over with your car?
Seriously- you're going to be spending either a lot of time pulling out nails and little bits of accumulated debris or a lot of money replacing blades and bits. To top it off, 99% of pallet wood is bottom-of the barrel crap to begin with. If you're really tight on money, you could always just get yourself some 2x4s and rip 'em to 3" widths to take the rounded corners off. Sure, working with pine framing timbers is not as pleasant as crafting something from walnut or maple, but you can do an awful lot of good work with them if you're patient.
Aut inveniam viam aut faciam
It's not impossible of course, but time has value, and the time it takes to get the pallets, bring them home, tear them apart, clean up the pieces, sort through the stock, try to match the same type of wood (!), dispose of the unusable parts, etc. I'd rather be using elsewhere. On top of that most of the pallets I'm seeing nowadays at local retailers and beer distibutors are spray painted a uniform color (at least on the sides) and recollected for reuse/recycle? I'm sure there are more places that just toss them but I think it will become less the norm. If WalMart is recycling them you can bet there is a good rea$on behind it.
--Cheers! Duke
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