Show Me Your Pallet Projects!

[wrathsfarm]

Waste management, huh? So he made you an offer you couldn't refuse??? LOL

I like your comment thinking "I don't get it".
Took me about an hour and then it hit... I think I needed coffee to jumpstart my brain for the day.
#facepalm

 

[Sally PB]

I live in the country with livestock and cornfields but work in and around 2 of the biggest cities in Michigan, one being the state capital (Lansing) and the other is Ann Arbor which is University of Michigan (college football, dorms and hospital)
So one day I could be building a pole barn alongside Amish...

Go Blue! National Champions!

My mom went to U of M. Her mom went to U of M. I went to Grand Valley.

(Go Lions too! Going to the SuperBowl, I just feel it!)

Sorry of the off topic. Home town pride, ya know?

 

[wrathsfarm]

Go Blue! National Champions!

My mom went to U of M. Her mom went to U of M. I went to Grand Valley.

(Go Lions too! Going to the SuperBowl, I just feel it!)

Sorry of the off topic. Home town pride, ya know?

Yes ma'am. Michigan bred. Born and raised near Saginaw, so always proud to be a troll. (For those that don't know that reference.. those of us in lower Mi live under a bridge)
I just got back this year after 3 years in West Virginia. The mountains and double rainbows I've seen were beautiful but it just wasn't home. The grandbabies had some pull too....

 

[wrathsfarm]

Wanted to share a couple other ideas for those scouring the wastelands. I collect shelves and cabinets/file cabinets made out of the cheap press board etc. The shelves make great poop boards if set flat side by side with a few backer/connector boards for support and trim for lip to hold bedding. Or you could stack them for partition walls.
I found a couple cheap made press board 2 drawer filing cabinets. Take the top drawer out, hang a curtain and waalaa... Nest box.
I also grab doors. My coops are in my pole barn so I use them for insta walls. A couple 3/0 (36") doors stacked make a 6' wall or big shelves for storage or even a top for a work bench. Hollow cores need beefing up if cut into or hanging nest boxes on them. They won't hold up to weather but hey, they are free.
Storm doors make great coop/run doors.
Hope someone finds this useful.

 

[gtaus]

Pole barn... I'm sorry. My native construction language. Here's pics of a different barn just to show what I'm referring to.

That makes sense. Those pole barns are used for lots of stuff. I know a guy who is building a huge "man cave" using the pole barn construction. Interestingly, he is lining the inside walls with pallet wood for that rustic "manly" feel. Looks pretty good.

 

[gtaus]

Wanted to share a couple other ideas for those scouring the wastelands. I collect shelves and cabinets/file cabinets made out of the cheap press board etc. The shelves make great poop boards if set flat side by side with a few backer/connector boards for support and trim for lip to hold bedding. Or you could stack them for partition walls.
I found a couple cheap made press board 2 drawer filing cabinets. Take the top drawer out, hang a curtain and waalaa... Nest box.
I also grab doors. My coops are in my pole barn so I use them for insta walls. A couple 3/0 (36") doors stacked make a 6' wall or big shelves for storage or even a top for a work bench. Hollow cores need beefing up if cut into or hanging nest boxes on them. They won't hold up to weather but hey, they are free.
Storm doors make great coop/run doors.
Hope someone finds this useful.

I love seeing people salvaging stuff and giving it a second purpose in life. I wish we did more of that here in the USA. Too much of useable stuff is just sent to the landfill because people get tired of something, or maybe something needs a little fixing, or perhaps no longer good for its initial use. But that stuff could be reused by someone with some imagination.

Somewhere along the line I started to become more "aware" of how much stuff I threw out that could be reused maybe for another purpose. Both Dear Wife and I have attempted to reduce our trash sent to the landfill to a minimum.

We used to have 3-4 garbage bags per week for the trash. Over the years, we started to send stuff to the recycle bins. Then I got into reusing and repurposing stuff, which reduced our waste stream even more. Then I started to shred all our junk paper and light cardboard and using the paper shreds as deep bedding in the chicken coop. Using those paper shreds I make at home really cut down on the bulk of trash and recyle goods. Then I got a powered scissors to cut heavy cardboard and now I shred all our Amazon and QVC shipping boxes as well. Makes wonderful coop litter, then it gets tossed into the chicken run for composting. Then the compost is used in my pallet wood raised beds.

Over the years, we had reduced our landfill trash bags to 1 or 2 per month. That's pretty good. However, for the past 6 months, Dear Wife and I have used our kitchen garbage bin for only burnable stuff. Then I take that garbage out about once every 3 weeks and burn it in a fire pit I have where I am burning out a stump. For the past 6 months, we have not sent anything to the landfill. That's pretty good - especially since the landfill station is a 30-mile roundtrip for me.

If we have some non-recyclable, non-burnable garbage, like empty spray cans, dead batteries, etc... we bag them up in small plastic bags and dump then in the public garbage cans outside the big box stores. There is very little of that stuff, and if you put it in a small bag like you might keep in the car for waste, nobody cares if you dump a small bag into the store's trash bin when you go inside for some shopping.

Unfortunately, my community is not as "Green" as I wish they were. For example, our landfill charges businesses for them to dispose of their pallets. I asked the manager/head worker of the landfill if I could pick up some free pallets from the landfill and was told that they bury all the pallets as fast as they get them. No chance to reuse all those used pallets at my local landfill. I think that is a shame, so when I pick up a pallet from a business in town for use in one of my pallet projects, I consider it almost a community service.

 

[chickengr]

Wanted to share a couple other ideas for those scouring the wastelands. I collect shelves and cabinets/file cabinets made out of the cheap press board etc. The shelves make great poop boards if set flat side by side with a few backer/connector boards for support and trim for lip to hold bedding. Or you could stack them for partition walls.
I found a couple cheap made press board 2 drawer filing cabinets. Take the top drawer out, hang a curtain and waalaa... Nest box.
I also grab doors. My coops are in my pole barn so I use them for insta walls. A couple 3/0 (36") doors stacked make a 6' wall or big shelves for storage or even a top for a work bench. Hollow cores need beefing up if cut into or hanging nest boxes on them. They won't hold up to weather but hey, they are free.
Storm doors make great coop/run doors.
Hope someone finds this useful.

I pick up cabinets and drawers as well. they can be used like brooders, nest boxes, etc. I have just made a quail shelter from 2 drawers and cabinet doors. I put it in a covered coop. when it is too cold they get in. there are 16 quails.

 

[gtaus]

I was out in my toasty 43F newly-heated attached garage this afternoon to process some pallet wood planks. The garage floor heat that I got fixed is working great. I was prepared to fire up my little 60,000 BTU propane heater to kick the temps up to around 55F, but I found the garage plenty warm enough at 43F with a jacket and cap on my head. Well, at least for the hour or so that I was in the garage de-nailing the pallet wood.

Anyways, I mentioned that I would have a few small things to share once I started working in the garage. Here is the first small thing I worked on today.

As I said, today it was just about de-nailing 3 pallets of wood that I took apart a long time ago. You may remember that I invested in the Air Locker AP700 nail punch gun last summer...

Basically, you stick the bottom of the nail into the nose of the Air Locker AP700 gun, pull the trigger, and it shoots the nail out of the wood. But you don't want the nails to go just anywhere. It's best to shoot them into a container so they don't go bouncing all over the garage.

I decided to use one of my 5-gallon buckets I got from Harbor Freight for free on their special weekend sale last month. I had a bucket lid that was chewed up from a stupid squirrel. Dear Wife had bird seed stored in a 5-gallon bucket out on our back deck this summer and a squirrel(s) tried to chew it off to get to the seeds.

That lid was not good for anything important anymore, so it was the perfect lid for my project. I had a piece of wood that was about the size of the slit/hole that I wanted to cut in the lid.

I traced around the edges of the wood and used a utility knife to cut out a slit in the lid...

When you shoot out the nails, they can bounce back at you, especially in a shallow pail. The 5-gallon pail should be good enough not to worry much about bounce back, but still I put a rag in the bottom of the bucket so the nails have little chance of bouncing back at me...

I put the lid on this bucket, and stacked it on top of another 5-gallon bucket to bring it up to a better working height. I don't like bending over, so the 2 bucket height at 29 inches tall was much better. I think I will dial that in even better next time and add maybe another 6 inches in height. That might be about perfect for me...

All that was left was to put the boards on the bucket lid, one by one, and shoot out the nails...

It worked great for me. As I have said, using the Air Locker AP700, I can de-nail my pallet wood 3X-4X faster than using a hammer and/or crowbar. The Air Locker really is a time and labor saver. It's not required, of course, but it sure is a nice tool for driving nails out of your salvaged wood.

I have another 6 pallets in the garage to breakdown and de-nail, then I am planning on starting some small build projects. Will post those pics after the projects are done. For now, I'm just so happy that the garage is warm enough to work in. I can start to do a few things now, rather than having to wait another 8 weeks for the outside temps to warm up.

Later...

 

[Sally PB]

@gtaus, Excellent idea, using the bucket as a nail catcher! The lid and rag in the bottom are inspired additions.

I'm sure you said, but I don't recall. How much was the Air Locker, and is it electric or pneumatic?

 

[gtaus]

Excellent idea, using the bucket as a nail catcher! The lid and rag in the bottom are inspired additions.

I watched many YouTube videos where guys were making a plywood top with a hole/slit in it to shoot the nails out into a bucket. I thought to myself, heck, I've got a chewed-up lid good for nothing else, so might as well try it instead of a piece of plywood. So far, that lid is working fine.

Even better, I can still stack that bucket along with my other buckets because the lids are the same size - whereas a piece of plywood would not stack as well. And, of course, now all my nails are in one easy to carry bucket.

I'm sure you said, but I don't recall. How much was the Air Locker, and is it electric or pneumatic?

The Air Locker AP700 is a pneumatic air tool. You can get it tool only, or with the extra piston for a few dollars more. I intend to use my Air Locker for years, so it was definitely worth it to me to buy the Air Locker with the extra piston. If you use the tool a lot, eventually you will wear out, bend, or break that piston. All you have to do is unscrew the back cover on the Air Locker, remove the old piston, and put in the new one, replace cover. Then you are back in service again.

There are some other brand nail punchers like the Air Locker, maybe for a few dollars less. However, most of them do NOT have the ability to replace the piston if it breaks. That leaves you with a dead tool when the piston eventually fails. I like tools that will last a lifetime and can be fixed and put back into service when parts wear out.

When I bought my Air Locker AP700 with extra piston last year, it cost me about $60.00. That was a good deal at the time. However, I see that you can get the same kit today on Amazon for $58.00! That's a great price. You can buy the Air Locker AP700 tool only for about $50.00.

I am doing lots of stuff with pallet wood and the Air Locker AP700 was worth the money I spent on it. But it's not a "must have" tool if you are only doing maybe a few small pallet projects. I used a hammer and crowbar for many years to remove nails without complaint. The Air Locker AP700 just lets me do the same job 3X-4X faster and much easier. Plus, I'm at an age and position where I don't mind spending a few extra dollars on tools for my hobbies.