Show Me Your Pallet Projects!

[Knobby]

That's not good! At least you are alive to talk about it. I have heard of some people that shot their head off cleaning an "empty" gun. I don't know what your gun accident was, but it's good to hear you survived.

When I was a young kid taking my first gun safety course from the NRA, we were always told that you always handle every gun as if it was loaded. Always. I think that was good advice.

Wishing you a good recovery.

Thank you sir! Yes, I was cleaning an "empty" gun and it went off..shot through my hand, through my calf and into my new wood floor..lol. The embarrassing thing is that I am one of those NRA certified safety instructors. Luckily, no bones were hit and I am hoping for a full recovery.

 

[Knobby]

get well soon and stay away from guns.

I'm a collector...have 165 guns in my collection and am president of a rifle/pistol range. Guns are in my blood...lol

 

[gtaus]

Thank you sir! Yes, I was cleaning an "empty" gun and it went off..shot through my hand, through my calf and into my new wood floor..lol. The embarrassing thing is that I am one of those NRA certified safety instructors. Luckily, no bones were hit and I am hoping for a full recovery.

Let's hope you fully recover with nothing left but a lesson (re)learned and a bruised ego as a reminder! It's usually the stuff we do everyday that bite us in the butt because we should have known better. Been there myself. Luckly, not with a loaded firearm!

I have been bit a time or two with my tools I use all the time.

I'm a collector...have 165 guns in my collection and am president of a rifle/pistol range. Guns are in my blood...lol

My grandfather was an avid outdoorsman and hunter. Growing up, I spent a lot of time with him in the fields and on the lakes. Great memories. When I was in college, my grandfather passed away. All our firearms were stored at my grandfather's house. Someone broke into his house when he was in the hospital and took everything. Worse yet, we know who broke into the house - a relative with mental and drug addiction problems - but the police were never able to make progress on the incident and we lost everything. I never did replace my rifles after that because my life had changed and hunting was no longer something I did.

Back in the day, in the 1970's, we viewed the NRA as a proponent of hunting and all us young boys took the NRA gun safety course at about 13 years old. That was a really big deal for us. I am still pro-hunting and for being able to have firearms for that endeavor.

Anyways, this is a pallet project thread, so let me post a nice Google picture of a pallet wood rifle rack that someone might find interesting...

 

[chickengr]

I'm a collector...have 165 guns in my collection and am president of a rifle/pistol range. Guns are in my blood...lol

watch them from distance!

 

[Knobby]

watch them from distance!

Id rather shoot them at targets at a distance...hehe

 

[gtaus]

My Pallet Wood Modifications for Stackable Compost Bin Project

OK, I am pretty much done with my pallet wood stackable compost bin project. It was great fun taking the original design and using pallet wood to build this project. I'll have a number of comments on modifications needed if you use pallet wood, but first let me link you to the original article I got from the stackable compost bin on the Wildflower Yard website.

If you are interested in building a stackable compost bin, I recommend you refer to the original article to see the full build design. What I will be discussing is the modifications I had to make using free pallet wood.

First of all, here is their supply list (2018)...

I like them using picket fencing as it is much cheaper than even standard pine board. Of course, pallet wood is free so save yourself even more money.

And the cut list...

Which you use to make something like this...

My Pallet Wood Modifications: At first I did not understand why they did not make the compost bin tiers square - 3X3 feet. But now I see they are using dog ear picket fencing board which has a bit cut off on the top...

That explains why one side was 36 inches and the other side was 34 inches. In any case, you can use whatever size you want for your build. Since I was using pallet wood, I decided to make my stackable compost bins 36 inches square.

I came up with this size based on the pallets I had to work with which were the standard 40 inches wide by 48 inches long...

I used the circular saw method to cut off the top planks (deck boards) from the 2X4 stretcher (stringer). Then I pried up the boards in the middle and removed the nails. That left me with a usable board of about 38 inches in length. If you used the reciprocation saw method, and cut the boards off the 2X4 with a demolition blade, you could get the full 40 inch board. However, most of my pallets have checked and cracked ends so I end up cutting them off anyways. It's just faster using a circular saw and cutting them off at the start.

As to the pallet wood planks, they are not all the same size. Some are 3 inches wide, others maybe 4 inches, and I had a lot of boards that were 5-1/2 inches wide. When you look at the diagram of each tier, you can see that the first criteria are to match up the width of each board on each tier.

Next consideration is that pallet wood planks are not uniform thickness. My planks were anywhere from 1/2 inch thick, to 5/8 inch, to 3/4 inch. So, second criteria are to match the thickness of all the boards on the same tier.

Mind you, you can use different width and thickness boards on other tiers, but each tier has to be of the same size (width and thickness) planks. Well, let's agree to that for simplicity right now.

The advantage to building a stackable compost bin with uniform lumber is that it is very easy just to cut all the pieces the same length without any further thought. When dealing with pallet wood, and knowing that each tier might use a different thickness board, you have to re-think the whole concept of how they will stack. You cannot just measure the length of the boards all the same, put them together, and expect them to stack if you use different sized thickness boards on different tiers.

Pallet boards that are 3/4 inch thick will have a different inside dimension than pallet boards that 1/2 inch thick, and that little bit of difference will mess up the ability of the legs to slip into the tier below/above.

In my case using pallet wood of different thicknesses, I had to rethink the design concept so the inner dimensions (not the outside measurements) of each tier were 36X36 inches regardless of the thickness of the planks used.

I don't want to make it too complicated, but if you used 3/8 inch thick board on one tier, it would have an inside dimension of 35-1/4 inches. If you used 3/4 inch thick boards on the next tier, the inside dimensions would be 34-1/2 inches. That will not line up for a stackable design.

The modification for pallet wood use is that you cut the first 2 sides at your 36 inches, then you add the combined thickness of those boards and add it to the length of your other two boards. For example, if you used 1/2 inch thick planks, your would cut the first 2 boards at 36 inches, and the other 2 overlapping boards would be cut at 36+1/2+1/2= 37 inches.

If your next tier used 3/4 inch thick planks, you would start off cutting the first 2 boards at 36 inches, but the second pair of overlapping boards would have to be cut at 36+3/4+ 3/4 = 37-1/2 inches long.

Doing it that way keeps the inside dimensions of the stackable tier at exactly 36X36 inches regardless of the thickness of the planks used.

Next issue I found was that even though my inside dimensions were now all 36X36 inches, I found that the legs of one tier might still be a bit off when I stacked the tiers.

Take a look at this picture again...

In theory, the legs should all fit perfectly into the other tiers. In reality, I found that the legs could still be off just enough that I would have to tap the legs in with a hammer. They were just too tight. To solve that problem, I added a slight slant to the legs maybe only 1/8 inch towards the center on the bottom of the leg. That fixed the problem of the legs being too tight and I no longer needed to use a hammer to tap them into place.

I built a nice jig for putting together the pieces, and it worked somewhat. But last night I thought of a new way to put the tiers together faster and easier without using the jig. So, I won't bother with showing a picture of that jig. I'm going to disassemble it anyway. I have an 18 gauge brad nailer and now use that to nail the board together, then I add the legs with a couple of shims to give the leg a slant, and then I just screw in the leg with the shims in place. I used a 1/8 inch thick piece of wood on the 2 sides of the boards to give each leg a slight slant towards the middle. That was enough to loosen up the design for each leg to easily slip into the tier below.

If you made it this far, here is a picture of my completed pallet wood stackable compost bin...

For the legs, I just used whatever pieces I had available, it does not have to be 2X2 lumber...

Notice how some legs are 2X2, some are 2X4 and others might be a cut off from a pallet stretcher. It really does not matter for the legs as long as they can stack on the leg below.

I don't know if you can see how I added a slight 1/8 inch slant to each leg towards the middle of each frame in this picture, but that was the trick to get the legs to more easily stack one into the tiers.

I think I mentioned a long time ago that I liked the idea and design of this stackable compost bin. I had great fun building it with pallet wood, but if you just want a simple compost bin, nothing beats just 4 pallets tied together. The benefit of the stackable design is if you want to hot compost your material because you can take off each tier and restack them beside it, forking out the compost material as you turn over and rebuild the pile.

Any comments or suggestions most welcome. Later...

 

[fuzzi]

Oh, one more thing about honey... it is one of the most often "faked" foods out there. I bought some "raw unfiltered honey" at Costco. It's in the basement. It has not crystalized at all, but my real honey from a real beekeeper did.

Just FYI; back to building ideas!

I didn't know that, thanks!

 

[fuzzi]

Bee hives are usually made of wood. Here's a picture of what would be called a "deep box." Notice all the dado (?) joints in the corners. I think the wood is usually 3/4" thick. When full of frames of honey, this could weigh 90 pounds, so the joints have to be very strong. I think the wood itself is pine, but the quality has to be high. No splits, no large knots, very uniform thickness, and no warping. (Well, that leaves out pallet wood, I guess.)

(Picture from Dadant's website; they sell "bee gear," including unassembled hives.)
View attachment 3742070

We called them "dovetail" joints.

 

[McChooky]

Did you ever find out who stole your tools? We have a big drug problem around here, and usually stuff like tools get stolen for drug money, pennies on the dollar for what we paid at the store. Well, that's what the police told me after I reported a theft on my property. No hope of ever seeing that stuff again.

Anyways, hope your new tools serve you well!

Thieves are so bad to sue that most insurance companies require a homeowner to insure their dogs in case they bite someone on the property (trespassers included).I have a sweet basset hound that only barks.

 

[McChooky]

That

I'm a collector...have 165 guns in my collection and am president of a rifle/pistol range. Guns are in my blood...lol

It was bound to happen sooner or later.To err is human ...