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Old Posted: 11-02-2009 , 10:08 AM #19
Headwave
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Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Co. Clare
Posts: 22
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Cheers,
Here's other uses for people to think about.

Regular/Euro pallets/110s fly together as compost frames! They're heavy and stay put. A few nails or screws and they're up in minutes, brace themselves and need no framing.

I have one pallet outside my shed, at my folks place, as a door step so as not to make a muddy hole at the door and to stop me putting my back out stepping in and out. Reduces mud going in to shed also. Being slatted if scrubs down easy as well. (They can get slippy, you can staple chicken wire over them to compensate).

They make a good temporary filler for holes in your hedge to keep cows out.

You can make a fence real fast with them as well. Stand them up by sledging a fence post down through them as support. Butt them end to end and screw them together as you go. I've not done this yet but with the recession and constant cow incursions I'm thinking of a solid fence around the veg plot. As they are slatted they let the wind through and slow it down, thereby reducing wind shear on the plants.

If you can find the dark reddish ones they are the best. They have the tidiest edges and cleanest planed timber. The slots are very narrow so you get more wood per pallet. They make warmer compost frames as a result. They are some form ofBrazilian hard wood I think. I think it's the softer stuff they don't put in your front door. These pallets last and last in our damp where the white soft wood ones are gone in a few years. The hardwood ones are good to cut and drill also. I made an inkle loom out of one once.

There is a pallet that comes with a very strong timber frame. I've only been given the wood and not seen these pallets whole though. The wood has a really close grain, looks like Ash, and I've turned small items with it on a pole lathe.
The wood comes in good lengths. I'm going to try make a 'waster', a wooden medieval practice sword....one day.

If you keep hens prop one pallet up against another and fix together to make a sun shelter for them.

Extracting useful timber from pallets quickly:
The quickest way to brake a pallet for fire wood is with a chain saw. The quickest way to break it for timber however is with a circular saw. What puts people off using pallet wood as stock is the time it takes to break the pallet.

Most pallets have 3 support rails that the boards are nailed into. There is usually 3 boards spanning these rails. They go on the ground. Mostly you'll want the top boards for projects. Many pallets are fixed together with 'wire' nails that have a ring grip along them. They are a beast to pull apart. If you go at a pallet with a crow bar you'll split more boards than you'll save. So plan to sacrifice an inch or so off each end of the boards i.e. the distance from the end of the board to inside the nail that holds it to the rail. First, from the under side, cut through the 3 boards that go on the floor, anywhere inside the outer edge rails will do and again either side on the centre rail. That's 12 cuts. Put those short boards aside and use as you like. If you want to keep these boards as long as you can don't cut along the centre rail,so that's 6 cuts.
Leave the stubs attached or you'll just end up working on nails as they will likely not come out. Flip the pallet over, topside up.
What you want to do now is cut a straight line across all the boards parallel to the outer edge rail and inside the line the nails take. This is so as you miss them and don't cut into them. NB: You need to set the depth of the blade on your saw to only cut the boards and not into the rail (too much). It'll make it more work and the saw may ride up out of the wood if you cut too deep.
You do this at both ends of the pallet/board ends. The boards will now come away attached only to the centre rail. If is now easier to break the boards away from this and with less damage to the valuable boards. Obviously the boards will have nail holes in their middles but there are plenty of ways to fill them. The rest of the pallet can be cut up for fire wood or you can strip out the nails and try save the rails for framing your projects.

Hope this is useful if not sorry for the data burst. Perhaps JT could set-up a blog/tutorial site on the side!
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