Show Me Your Pallet Projects!

[Smokerbill]

Yeah, my truck is a 2011 and I consider a tool, not a fancy vehicle I need to keep shiny to impress others on the road. I try to give it a good washing and waxing once every year or two. I don't worry about the few dents and scratches in the body because it still does its job.

 

[gtaus]

sorry to hear it.

I wish we had cheap vehicles here. prices for second hand here are awfully high. not cars only, anything.

Used car prices have come down a lot in the last couple of years. They were very high during the COVID and post-COVID period, just like most stuff, but prices came down as inventory started returning to normal. If my old Explorer was worth some money, it would have changed my decision to repair or replace. But it just does not have any value at present, so one major repair job was all it took to end up in retirement.

 

[Molpet]

My truck is a 2008 and has a snow plow on it. Less than 40k miles on it. Has had the break lines, transmission lines, catalytic converter changed the last couple years. A few dents from the ground hog day blizzard in 2011.

 

[gtaus]

My truck is a 2008 and has a snow plow on it. Less than 40k miles on it. Has had the break lines, transmission lines, catalytic converter changed the last couple years. A few dents from the ground hog day blizzard in 2011.

Well, it makes sense to have repairs done on a "newer" car with less than 40K miles. Nothing on my old Ford Explorer was not repairable, but it was an estimated $1,500.00 repair job for a car that 32 years old and had 180,000+ miles on it. My mechanic recommended I not put that much money in it, given the overall state of the car and its low used car value.

For the past couple of years, it was only used for pallet pickups. It was great to take it into town for errands and on the way home pick up maybe 6 pallets to toss in the back. But my backyard is now stocked full of pallets to last me many years of my small projects. And I still have a small 4X8 foot utility trailer if I need to pick up stuff. I can hitch that up to any of my other cars.

Speaking of which, I drove past our local Bobcat dealer in town today and I see that they have a bunch of those pallets made up of only 2X4's. 2X4's for the stretchers, and 2X4's for the planks. Those kinds of pallets are great because the 2X4's tend to be in great shape, no notches, and some pallets are as long as 10 feet. Most are 4X6 feet. They are usually easy to take apart using a crowbar. Sometimes, they use deck screws on those 2X4 pallets and that really makes it easy to take them apart - plus I get a bunch of Torx head screws for reuse.

I might try to hitch up the utility trailer and work up some salvaged wood there one night. Because of the size and weight of those pallets made from 2X4's, I usually spend a few hours there breaking down the pallets and tossing the lumber into the trailer. They are just too heavy for me to lift up and put into the trailer. But they don't mind if I break down the pallets on site after working hours.

 

[gtaus]

I mentioned how much I liked to toss pallets in the back of the Explorer and not having to worry about scratching or ripping anything. Although that vehicle is gone, I was thinking about using my older Hyundai Santa Fe as a replacement for the Explorer.

The Santa Fe is almost as big as the old Explorer, but Dear Wife would NOT be happy if I messed up our/her backup car with my pallets.

This weekend, Harbor Freight is having FREE gifts for minimum purchases...

I was looking at those moving blankets and think I might be able to spread them out in the back of the Santa Fe and put pallets on blankets. I'll have to measure everything, because the pallets would have to fit. I am an Inside Track Club (ITC) member at Harbor Freight, so I only had to buy anything to get the FREE moving blankets...

Yesterday, I bought a pair yellow lens safety glasses for $1.00 and got my FREE gift. Today, I bought a smoke colored pair of safety glasses for $1.00 and got another blanket. Tomorrow, I plan on buying another pair of safety glasses, probably clear lens, and picking up that third moving blanket.

If it works out, I might be able to replace my old Explorer with the Santa Fe and use the moving blankets to protect the interior of the car. If not, I still have some nice moving blankets that I got for free.

The safety glasses I bought are normally $1.99 each, but they have a Dollar's Day sale going on right now and you can pick them up for $1.00 each with the coupon.

I wear safety glasses almost all the time when working with my tools. I value my eyesight. These $1.00 (on sale) safety glasses are rated for just about anything I will do around the house. They are very light weight, and they wrap around your eyes for side protection as well. They are much better than I expected.

EDIT: I must have forgotten to hit the submit button on this post. Although that weekend sale is over now, you can still get those safety glasses for $1.00 through 17 Aug 2025.

 

[gtaus]

Wood Mulch Mountain!

A few weeks ago, we had a severe storm hit our town. Some people say we lost almost half our old growth trees. The cleanup has been going on for weeks. There are a number of large, open areas where all the wood is being ground up and piled into huge mountains of wood mulch.

Here is just one of the piles of wood mulch in town...

That was just one pile of three at this site. From what I hear, there are another 3 sites around the town for all the tree debris. To give you an idea of how tall that mountain is, here is a picture of my ~60-year-old 4X8 foot utility trailer full of wood shreds...

In the past, I have used wood chips at home for lots of things; coop litter, nest box material, chicken run floor, top mulch for gardens, pathways, carbon for compost mixing, etc... However, these were not wood chips. Take a look at how coarse these shreds are...

To give you a scale of how big those shreds are, that lighter brown branch piece on the bottom of the picture was about 12 inches long and maybe 2 inches round. It is way too coarse for most things I would use wood chips for around the house. But I loaded up the trailer just the same thinking I might find a good use for the wood shreds.

I decided to put most of the load into my pallet wood stackable compost bins for storage. I have talked about how easy it is to pick up and move those stackable tiers to any place you want. In less than 10 minutes, I built these 3 stackable compost bins and filled them with wood shreds...

After I took this picture, I made another four pallet wood stackable compost tiers this week to add to these bins. I am getting pretty good, and fast, at making them. It takes a bit longer to make the stackable tiers compared to screwing together 4 pallets for a bin, but it's well worth my time and effort considering how handy, and easy, it is for me to take apart a stackable bin and move it somewhere else. As you can see in this picture, you can add as many tiers as you want, or take off tiers for another bin if needed.

I did fill up my 10 cubic foot wagon full of these shreds and dumped them into the chicken run...

I have been dumping loads and loads of grass clippings into my chicken run these past few months, so I thought it would be a good idea to add some of these wood shreds to the liter. I don't go crazy about compost ratios, but I like to mix up the greens and browns for the chicken run compost. It only took a few hours before my composting chickens had that pile of wood shreds leveled out and mostly buried into all those grass clippings.

In the background, you can see my original pallet wood stackable compost bin that is currently half full of dry leaves. I keep a cover on that bin and have the leaves covered to prevent them from getting wet when it rains. You can never have too many dry leaves to use if you have chickens.

Even though these wood shreds are free, I don't know if I will be picking up another load or not. They are just too big and coarse for most things I would use for much smaller wood chips. I think these wood shreds might all end up getting dumped into the chicken run for composting. I expect it will take a long time for them to break down into compost, but I do have a nice cement mixer compost sifter that will reject the bigger pieces, and I can just toss the larger, unfinished wood back into the run for more composting.

For those of you who love numbers, my 4X8 foot trailer is just over 12 inches deep. That makes one haul in the trailer just over 32 cubic feet. My pallet wood stackable compost bin tiers are 3X3 feet square. I can fit my entire trailer full load of wood shreds in a bin less than 4 feet tall (3X3X4=36 cubic feet). That's a lot of storage space, nicely confined to a base footprint of 3X3 feet.

When I first got chickens ~5 years ago, I got some wood chips in the trailer and dumped them out on the ground. They spread out taking up about 6 feet round. The pallet wood stackable bins hold much more in a much smaller space. What's not to love about that?

 

[Sally PB]

Those wood shreds would be great as a layer over logs in a hugelkutur bed!

 

[gtaus]

Those wood shreds would be great as a layer over logs in a hugelkutur bed!

I agree. I have already made all the new hügelkultur beds for this year, but those coarse wood shreds would be excellent to fill in the gaps between larger logs. I saved about 20 cubic feet of the wood shreds for future use, so maybe next year they will get tossed into some new hügelkultur beds if I build more.

If you remember, this year I built a new hügelkultur raised bed and filled it with pallet wood off cut bits and pieces...

That's a good way to use up all those pallet wood cut offs instead of burning them. That picture represents most of the cut offs I saved over the winter months. I think I had about six or seven 5-gallon pails full of cut offs in the garage that I dumped into that bed. Cleaned out the garage and filled a raised bed at the same time. Win-win in my book.

But yeah, a layer of those coarse wood shreds in a hügelkultur bed would be a great idea. Maybe even better is using the rejects from sifting my chicken run compost. I suspect many of these larger pieces of shredded wood will take a few years to break down, even when mixed in with all the grass clippings in the chicken run. But a good year sitting out in the chicken run might soften up the wood, making it more sponge like, and that would be even better for the raised beds.

For anyone new to this thread, here is a picture of my cement mixer compost sifter that I use for processing my chicken run compost...

The finished compost gets screened out and falls into the black wagon. I like to mix that screened compost 1:1 with good quality topsoil and add it to my raised beds. The larger pieces get rejected into the grey wagon. Those rejects are either tossed back into the chicken run for more time composting, used as top mulch in my gardens, or used in a new hügelkultur raised bed if I am building one at the time.

My goal is to use, and reuse, as much natural material as I have on my property. It's been a good 20 years since I hauled off leaves, grass clippings, or tree debris off to the landfill. I am able to use most of my tree branches and logs in raised beds when I cut them up into pieces.

If I burn any wood these days, it's usually to burn out a stump. So, I don't feel bad about burning wood because it costs a lot of money to remove a stump if you have to rent a stump grinder for the day. I burned out three stumps this summer. Saved myself about $100 not renting a stump grinder for the day. Took a number of weeks to burn out the stumps, but that's OK with me.

Goggle picture of my stump burning setup...

That's all I use. Just clean up the yard, toss the broken branches into the barrel, and light the fire when I get enough wood in the barrel. If I have a bucket or two of pallet wood cut offs, they might end up in the burn barrel as well to burn out a stump.

 

[Sally PB]

That's a great way to get rid of a stump.

There are a lot of trees/shrubs that are invasive here, and will readily come back from a stump.

 

[gtaus]

That's a great way to get rid of a stump.

There are a lot of trees/shrubs that are invasive here, and will readily come back from a stump.

I will either drill holes into the stump or cut grooves in it with my chainsaw. Then I soak it with a used motor oil/diesel mixed 1:1 for a few days, adding a little more liquid a couple times a day until the stump is pretty much all soaking wet. Then I light a fire and burn out the stump, which takes hours, but in the end the stump is gone, and I have never had anything come back from the burning.

It takes a few days for the stump to soak up all that motor oil and diesel mixture. But if you can be patient, it ends up with a nice, slow, burning stump with nothing left but ash in the end.

Some people will use fryer oil, which I am told smells like French Fries when you burn out the stump. I had access to free used motor oil, so that is what I used.