Show Me Your Pallet Projects!

[Molpet]

Seen this and thought of this thread . A jig to hold the end when ripping plywood.
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/stVDrssHNqYmfREJ/?mibextid=D5vuiz

 

[gtaus]

Seen this and thought of this thread . A jig to hold the end when ripping plywood.
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/stVDrssHNqYmfREJ/?mibextid=D5vuiz

Some of the best ideas are simple solutions. Thanks for sharing.

 

[gtaus]

Today, I finished upgrading my last 4X4 foot 2-foot-tall protective cage. I used all pallet wood for my top frame and the side posts. I ripped all the boards on my table saw. Here is a picture of the finished upgrades, with a top frame made from pallet wood 2X4's ripped down to 2X2's...

Last night, after I posted an update on this project, I got to thinking that I might need some kind of cover for the cage if I filled it up with leaves for the winter. I was considering that at some point I would have removed enough leaves that a tarp on top of the cage would form a big bowl, snow and ice would fill it in, and I might not be able to remove it until spingtime.

So, I made that top frame which can be removed. The chicken wire should be able to hold the tarp with snow on top, as long as I brush off the snow every once in a while. I guess I'll find out.

But even more importantly, I think using a removable top will make it easier for me to tend the raised bed and plants inside. I would only have to remove the top and not remove the entire cage.

If I convert the protective cage into a cold frame by stapling on clear plastic, I could easily prop up or completely remove the separate top on a hot day.

Lots of options with having the separate top frame. I'll probably think of a few more in the coming days.

Anyways, my intention today was to fill the protective cage up with leaves for winter storage. I worked past dark this evening, vacuuming up leaves with my riding mower, because it was just too hot and humid for me earlier in the day out in the full sun. So, here is a picture this evening of my filled leaf bin...

I will put the top on it tomorrow and then tarp it. I don't think I will need another bin like that full of leaves, but I do have another open top cage to use if I want. That one cage bin holds about 3X more leaves than I used all last winter for the chicken run to cover the snow.

Felt good to use up some of that pallet wood and get it out of the garage. It won't be too long before I will have to empty the garage of stuff to get my cars in for the winter. I would rather keep my garage as a shop for the winter, but having the cars in the garage in the winter months is more important.

 

[fuzzi]

Sounds like a good idea. I don't live in town, but I have 3 acres of wooded property with more leaves than I need. If I lived in town, I think I would pick up those bags of leaves as well.

Years ago, I used to shred my leaves to take down the bulk. I have a nice gas wood chipper/leaf shredder that I used for many years. Since I got a backyard flock 4 years ago, I just give the whole leaves to the chickens, and they shred them down with all their scratching and pecking. I prefer to let the chickens do the work, which they love to do. I have not used my leaf shredder since I got chickens.

I used to collect bags of leaves from neighbors but any of them not only contained sticks but trash, pine cones, and pine straw. It was too much work trying to clean up the junk.

We have a push mower with a bag. It works well to collect sycamore leaves and chop them up. I share them between the chickens and my raised beds.

 

[gtaus]

I used to collect bags of leaves from neighbors but any of them not only contained sticks but trash, pine cones, and pine straw. It was too much work trying to clean up the junk.

Why would people put trash into a leaf bag? That's just not right.

Before I got chickens and converted my chicken run into a chicken run composting system, I used to buy big bags of compost at the local stores. I always sifted that compost and pulled out glass, metal, plastic and who knows what else I might find. Yeah, that gets to be a lot of work cleaning up material when you don't know what might be in there. With my chicken run compost, I know exactly what I have.

We have a push mower with a bag. It works well to collect sycamore leaves and chop them up. I share them between the chickens and my raised beds.

In the bad old days, I remember raking up huge piles of leaves and burning them. That was how just about everybody got rid of their leaves.

But now I have a backyard flock, and I consider all those leaves like free money on the ground. I have 3 acres of property, so I use my riding mowers with large grass collection bins to vacuum up the leaves. I go out about every other day this time of year to mow up leaves off the lawn. That prevents getting too many leaves at one time and risking them getting all wet and matted down before the snow falls.

I thought I had a good idea to use my new protective cages on top of my raised beds to act like a storage bin for leaves. I can take whatever leaves I may need from the bin throughout the winter for spreading on top of the snow in the chicken run, or I might toss some leaves into the chicken coop to use as deep bedding litter. If any of those leaves in the cages compost into the raised bed over the winter, that's just another bonus for me.

Leaves can be a really valuable resource for those of us with chickens and/or have gardens. Finding a way to store them until you need them is like having money in the bank.

Money in the bank shot....

I have been really happy with my pallet wood framing upgrades to my existing chicken wire protective cages. The rigid pallet wood frames are much better than before, and I think much more useful to me. So far, I have only used a handful of drywall screws to put everything together. Practically free upgrades. I love reusing and upgrading stuff I already have.

 

[chickengr]

unfortunately no leaves here. I finally started to put fence around my garden. no pallet wood but salvaged material. metal frames from bike cages I got for free. chicken wire around.

 

[gtaus]

Workbench Built-In Jig for Square Frames

I have been making a number of square frames for my pallet wood protective chicken wire cages that I am upgrading to put on my raised beds in hopes that next year the deer will not be able to eat my plants. The deer ate almost all my Roma and other tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, Swiss Chard and Kale. It was a rough year.

Picture of the pallet wood chicken wire protective cages I am building...

After putting together a number of pallet wood frames for my chicken wire protective cages, I got to thinking that it would make things easier if I have some kind of way to hold my boards/rails at 90 degrees when I screwed them together. I know I could buy a nice corner jig from Harbor Freight that would work...

Those would be great to clamp down and hold the boards in place so I could drive my screws into the wood to hold them together. I might buy some of those, someday, but I came up with a better solution (for me) last night and tried it out today.

I have a pallet with a solid plywood top. I put that on a couple of sawhorses out in front of the garage and that makes a great temporary workbench. The plywood is already cut at 90 degree corners, so I thought why not just tack on some scrap wood on the corner(s) to line up my rails? Then I could clamp the rails on to the scrap wood holding it at 90 degrees. That should work good enough for this project.

So, I tacked on some scrap wood on a corner where I wanted my boards to meet...

That should give you the idea of where I am going with this built in jig. Then I slide the rails in place and clamp them down with my Irwin quick grips...

FYI, I hardly ever use those clamps because they don't have a lot of holding power. Or maybe it's just my old hands cannot squeeze them hard enough?

In any case, the big advantage to the "Quick Grips" is that they are my fastest clamps to set and still provide some good holding power. Enough holding power for this job. You can see I drove in a couple of drywall screws into the corner with no problem.

If my pallet workbench was bigger than my 4X4 foot frame, I would have probably only needed some scrap wood in that one corner. But the solid plywood top pallet that I have is something like 42X43 inches. So, a bit of the rails hangs over the ends. With that in mind, I tacked on a piece of scrap wood at the far corners to prevent the rails from falling off the edge of the workbench top...

That worked well, but after putting together a few rails, I found that I need a support at the far diagonal corner to support the frame...

Perfect! I was able to put those rails together and make a square frame in almost no time compared to hand holding the rails and trying to screw them in square. A few of my frames previously were a bit askew and I had to redo them. I don't need perfection, but I cannot live with a frame that is catty wampus!

Bonus feature with using this built in jig was the bottom of the rails resting on the plywood top are all flush. That might come in real handy if I end up using rails that are not exactly the same size. At least I will have one edge flush. Since I plan of making more frames and stapling chicken wire on them, I now know that I will have one edge flush for the stapling.

I plan on making a number of additional frames now. My earlier raised bed designs used 4X4 corner posts. Instead of being 48X48 inches square like my pallet wood raised beds v2.0, those earlier raised beds are 54X54 inches square. You can see how my 48X48 inch protective cages don't fit perfectly in those earlier raised beds with the 4X4 corner posts...

Not a big deal. My new workbench built in jig will make quick work for new frames. Plus, since I have to make new protective cages from scratch, I will buy some 36-inch-tall chicken wire. That should be perfect for my Roma tomatoes and pepper plants which got just over 2 feet tall this year, but less than 3 feet high.

Those deer will not eat my plants next year!

 

[gtaus]

I previously mentioned that our local Bobcat dealer had a big pile of shipping pallets out back. Most of the ones they currently have are 2X4 long pallets. On Sunday morning, I went there with a bucket full of tools and spent a few hours out there disassembling the pallet 2X4's on site. I filled up my utility trailer with 6-, 7-, and 8-foot long 2X4's that were in good shape.

A few of those shipping pallets used those nice Torx head screws. So, I used my impact driver with a Torx bit to take those pallets apart. I wish all pallets used those Torx head screws. Those boards came off so easy and no damage to the wood. I also kept all the Torx screws which I will no doubt use in a future project.

Those screws are definitely worth keeping because they cost a lot more than the drywall screws I use for most of my projects. I probably salvaged about 1 pound, or a bit more, of those Torx head screws...

On site, I had to disassemble those shipping pallets made with 2X4's because they were too heavy for me to move (safely) by myself. The advantage was that I got a lot more wood in my utility trailer because it was all broken down.

I even got a few 10-foot-long pallets that had some kind of heavy decking boards on them. I am sure that wood will be useful for something.

I picked up a few other non-standard type solid plywood top pallets and shipping frames made with like new 2X4's and boards. Good wood there.

Anyways, I now have a trailer full of wood that needs to be de-nailed. That should keep me busy for a few days.

I don't know exactly how much value of used pallet wood I loaded up Sunday morning, but I estimate it would have cost me over $200 for new 2X4 lumber at Home Depot or Menards. Not a bad morning's worth of work in salvaging that wood off those long shipping pallets.

 

[fuzzi]

I previously mentioned that our local Bobcat dealer had a big pile of shipping pallets out back. Most of the ones they currently have are 2X4 long pallets. On Sunday morning, I went there with a bucket full of tools and spent a few hours out there disassembling the pallet 2X4's on site. I filled up my utility trailer with 6-, 7-, and 8-foot long 2X4's that were in good shape.

A few of those shipping pallets used those nice Torx head screws. So, I used my impact driver with a Torx bit to take those pallets apart. I wish all pallets used those Torx head screws. Those boards came off so easy and no damage to the wood. I also kept all the Torx screws which I will no doubt use in a future project.

View attachment 3945590

Those screws are definitely worth keeping because they cost a lot more than the drywall screws I use for most of my projects. I probably salvaged about 1 pound, or a bit more, of those Torx head screws...

View attachment 3945591

On site, I had to disassemble those shipping pallets made with 2X4's because they were too heavy for me to move (safely) by myself. The advantage was that I got a lot more wood in my utility trailer because it was all broken down.

I even got a few 10-foot-long pallets that had some kind of heavy decking boards on them. I am sure that wood will be useful for something.

I picked up a few other non-standard type solid plywood top pallets and shipping frames made with like new 2X4's and boards. Good wood there.

Anyways, I now have a trailer full of wood that needs to be de-nailed. That should keep me busy for a few days.

I don't know exactly how much value of used pallet wood I loaded up Sunday morning, but I estimate it would have cost me over $200 for new 2X4 lumber at Home Depot or Menards. Not a bad morning's worth of work in salvaging that wood off those long shipping pallets.

Our local TSC has a huge dumpster filled with pallets. I've studied it the last couple times I was there. It's too tall for me to access the pallets easily. And I couldn't load them in my SUV, not without help.

 

[gtaus]

Our local TSC has a huge dumpster filled with pallets. I've studied it the last couple times I was there. It's too tall for me to access the pallets easily. And I couldn't load them in my SUV, not without help.

We don't have a TSC where I live. You might want to check on their pallet policy give away just in case you have a helper someday.

But we do have a Home Depot. They have lots of pallets out back but they will not let anyone take them. I guess they are in the business of selling lumber, not giving it away even in the form of used pallets.

Menards never gave away any pallets, either. But I was there a few weeks ago and they had a small stack of free pallets for pickup by their gate to the lumber yard. Maybe they have changed their pallet policy. Of course, the day I was there I was in a small car and could not load any pallets. So, I missed out on those pallets. But they had a nice sign there for the free pallets, so I think maybe it was more than a onetime thing. That would be nice to add Menards to my pallet run route when I go into town with my old Ford Explorer.