Palet wood, comes in three sorts

When I was in the USAF in Alaska my unit received a shipment of electronic equipment that had been pulled from a decommissioned operation in Thailand (Vietnam war period). All of it was packed on several oversized beefy pallets. One of the crew unpacking things took notice that the skids supporting the pallets were made of teak -- probably over 4-inches square and six feet long. Those disappeared almost instantly.

A friend of mine worked for a while in the yard at a hardware store. One of his duties was unloading trucks and breaking down pallets of merchandise. He noted that pallets came in made of a variety of different woods. Your typical rough cut soft woods, but he puled out lots of pretty decent hardwoods and set them aside. He had grown up working with his dad who was a fine furniture restorer.

I salvaged a whole stack of 8 foot sheet metal pallets made of kiln dried (mostly old growth) mixed hardwood and built a 10 x 10 shed out of them. Had to drill pilot holes for virtually EVERY screw and nail!!!

Oh yeah. I have some very nice hardwood, I'm not sure what, which came out of the core of the spools for steel cable. I also have some mahogany from a shipping crate. and so forth.

Back in the late 1980s, early 1990s, when I worked in a warehouse and dealt with pallets, I usually saw only rough pine pallets. Its possible there m ight have been some other woods in there. But I was far less knowledgeable about wood back then

Standard shaped pallets are about 4 foot by 6 foot. Three 2x4s in the midd le with cutouts at either end of the 2x4 so forklifts can pick them up from the side. Bottom slats are about 3 of them. Top slats are the whole 6 fo ot length with a half inch gap between slats. All of these slats are rough ly 1x4s. Rough. So you'd be lucky to plane and joint them down to 1/2" th ick finished. And the 2x4 middle pieces, by the time you trimmed off the c utouts on the bottom, you'd end up with only a 2x2 6 foot long.

So, unless you need rough wood, and mostly small pieces, pallets really don 't provide good wood to use. Especially not furniture.

I've made some very pretty boxes from pallet wood. Quartersawn white oak, red oak, mahogany, teak, poplar and a few others.

I read somewhere that something like 60% of harvested hardwood is used for pallets (the stuff that isn't clear enough to use for lumber).

That's pallets from the US. More and more gets imported.

My father jot a lot of WWII surplus "junk" for the university where he taught. Many of the pallets and cases for electronic equipment was made out of black walnut - all painted green. Strip the paint off and it was some beautiful stuff.

" snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com" on Tue, 10 Mar

I'm not all that knowledgeable either, but I can tell pine/fur from "that's not pine or fur". B-)

All depends. I still have the 4x4s (5 & 8 foot long) from the dumpster at work.

These are small pallets, the resulting boards are 12 to 15 inches. "Big enough" for what I have in mind. Okay, they're what I have ":what can I make with what I have on hand?" has been a design factor since I was 7.

I have made some beautiful small presentation boxes from the hardwood slats. You start by scraping the saw marks and "dirt" off the surfaces ...

I'll also admit, this is not "production work" but what I do for my own interest.

J. Clarke on Tue, 10 Mar 2020 19:16:51

-0400 typed >

I have seen, and heard of, wondrous woods being used for shipping containers and pallets, because In The Country Of Origin, that's what they have handy. One story was of the guy who traded a bunch of mahogany plywood (iirc) from shipping containers for a hand made guitar. "such a deal."

Most pallets are less than 6' Most common is 48" x 40" and 48 x 48. Avoid using CHEP pallets too.

Yes, you only get short pieces and since they are nailed together you can have a lot of holes. As for furniture, it depends. My wife collected dolls. I made a lot of furniture to scale for her. Oak is most common, and a nice oak desk is perfect for realism. Tables, benches, chairs, small pieces were perfect to work with.

No, I'd not make a full sized dining room table.

Get a chipper and a tanker of glue and make your own Ikea furniture.

After a day of down right depressing news, thanks for a smile and a laugh.

Ed Pawlowski on Thu, 12 Mar 2020 14:36:01 -0400 typed in rec.woodworking the following:

For that I'd either use a complete pallet, or look around for shipping crates to disassemble. I recall seeing a shipping crate near work 10 'x 20' by 8' . "That's bigger than my apartment!" Now, if only I'd had a means to move it, and a place to put it ....