Show Me Your Pallet Projects!

[gtaus]

Being very picky on pallets I take home...

I have mentioned that, over time, I have amassed a nice stockpile of pallets in the backyard...

One of the big advantages to having such a large stockpile is that I can really be picky about any new pallets I want to take home. Today was a perfect example. I was in town running errands, so I drove past a place that I have picked up pallets from over the last year. Today, they had 5 pallets for free pickup.

One pallet was exceptionally good and I took that leaving the other 4 pallets for someone else. There was a time not long ago that I would have gladly taken all 5 pallets and salvaged what I could out of them. Now I can really be picky and only take home the pallets in really good condition.

As many of you know, a pallet in really good condition is often the easiest to break down and save all the wood.

The pallets in poor condition usually have many broken boards and everything is held together with numerous nails. When you take apart a pallet in poor condition, you might end up with lots of firewood and relatively little useful wood.

I am thankful for all the pallets I have salvaged, but it's really nice to be in a situation, after one year, to really be selective in what I will take for my projects.

 

[Smokerbill]

Yep. I got some more stuff cleared out today and opened up my workbench with a heavy metal vise. I needed to use that to work on my DIY pallet buster that I busted.

Here is a picture of my DIY pallet buster when it was not broken...

View attachment 3603815

I have broken this pallet buster many times before, but always due to my bad welding. Well, I guess my welding skills have improved because this time the welds held, but the 4-foot-long black pipe that screws into the bottom forks broke off on the threads.

Unfortunately, the pipe broke off leaving a threaded ring of the long pipe inside the fork with no way of holding on to it to unthread it. I ended up using a metal file, then a reciprocating saw with a metal blade to cut the remaining threaded ring. Then I chiseled it out. With all that cutting and hammering, I needed my good heavy metal vise to bang on. So, cleared out some more of the garage and opened up the bench with my vise to get this job done.

It was a lot of work for a tool I really don't use that much. I rarely use my DIY pallet buster to break down pallets, because most of the time, it just cracks and breaks the pallet planks. My pallet buster does not work nearly as well as you see them on YouTube. Having said that, I occasionally come across a pallet that is perfect for my pallet buster and then it's really great to use. So, it's just another specialty tool in my toolbox and I have come to know when to use it and when I should use another method of pallet breakdown.



Thanks. I just bought a nice bottle of Titebond II glue and still have 3/4 of it left. I'm starting to get into using glue for stronger bonding.

Also, a month or so ago I bought some pipe clamp kits on sale at Menards for glue ups. I am thinking about gluing some pallet wood planks, side by side, probably with wooden dowels for alignment, into wide panels and then ripping them down to uniform size for utility shelves.

I have other boards that I could use for utility shelving, but I want to mess around with dowels and pipe clamps to see if I can actually do a panel glue up. I like learning new skills and it's fun, for me, to try out stuff on free pallet wood. If I mess up, it's no sweat that way.

Have you seen the youtube videos where people make fancy cutting boards from salvaged pallet wood and sell them for big bucks? Takes a lot of table sawing and planing, but if you can sell the finished product for a couple hundred, I guess it would be worth it.

 

[gtaus]

Have you seen the youtube videos where people make fancy cutting boards from salvaged pallet wood and sell them for big bucks? Takes a lot of table sawing and planing, but if you can sell the finished product for a couple hundred, I guess it would be worth it.

Yep, I have seen lots of YouTube videos of people claiming to make all kinds of money out of pallet projects. Good for them if they can. I'm only interested in making things for myself.

At my stage of life, my focus is now on making and doing things I enjoy without having to worry about paying all the bills all the time. I hope to enjoy these years as much as possible while I'm still in pretty good health.

I have been told there are a few guys in town that make and sell pallet projects. I don't know who they are or what they sell. But I guess it's definitely a way to bring in extra money.

Here is the way I look at things... There was time that I would have bought a raised garden bed kit from the big box stores and paid $200 for it. But now, I make a better version of the same thing out of pallet wood and save $200 on the build. Plus, I get to make it myself and enjoy the process.

I guess it's my hobby that saves me a lot of money whereas most of my hobbies cost me money.

 

[Sally PB]

My chicks have knocked over the dish of crushed eggshells for the last time. I hope. It's not pallet wood, but it is scrap wood left over from the coop add on this spring.

It is screwed into something made out of pallet wood. And the one white screw was reclaimed from something else made out of pallet wood.

 

[Smokerbill]

My chicks have knocked over the dish of crushed eggshells for the last time. I hope. It's not pallet wood, but it is scrap wood left over from the coop add on this spring.
View attachment 3604311
It is screwed into something made out of pallet wood. And the one white screw was reclaimed from something else made out of pallet wood.

Beautiful!

 

[gtaus]

My chicks have knocked over the dish of crushed eggshells for the last time. I hope. It's not pallet wood, but it is scrap wood left over from the coop add on this spring.
View attachment 3604311
It is screwed into something made out of pallet wood. And the one white screw was reclaimed from something else made out of pallet wood.

Very effective. Just to make sure I know what I'm looking at, did you build a wood frame, attach it the wall, and slip in the plastic dish? If so, I like the idea of a removeable dish because you can easily clean it out and/or swap out other dishes. I am thinking I have lots of plastic containers that we get food in, and they would make great removable dishes for a rack holder setup.

 

[gtaus]

Update on DIY pallet buster repairs...

I got my DIY pallet buster repaired today. I took out my Ryobi 18v bandsaw and cut off both broken threaded ends of the 4-foot-long black pipe. Then I took it into my local Home Depot and the guy there rethreaded the pipe for me. So, it now looks exactly like this photo only a couple inches shorter.

Anyways, what I wanted to mention is that Home Depot is the only big box store in my town that will thread pipe for the customer. Unfortunately, the older gentleman at Home Depot that rethreaded the pipe for me told me that Home Depot is phasing out that service. What they want to do is sell you pre-cut and pre-threaded pipe for 3X the cost. Our local Home Depot still has a pipe threading machine, but according to the guy at Home Depot, you won't find any pipe threading machines in the larger Home Depots in the larger cities.

That's really disappointing but Home Depot is cutting back on customer service in many areas. If you buy a tool from Home Depot, and it failed within the warranty period, they used to send it off to the repair shop. They no longer provide that service. Essentially, you might buy a tool and sometime after the store return period, but before the warranty expires, the tool fails and now you have to pay to ship it to some remote repair shop. How much will that cost you? Of course, the game is that you will just buy a new tool in many cases instead of spending your money to ship off the broken tool. I mean, I don't think I would spend $15.00 to ship off a broken tool under warranty that cost maybe $20.00 in a kit.

One disadvantage of reaching my age is that I remember better days with good customer service, and I miss customer service these days when I probably need it even more. I hate to keep thinking things were better when I was younger, but I think they were. Take for example the older gentleman that was helping me today. He was covering in another department because some employees failed to show up. So, he was essentially the only one covering 2 or 3 departments within the Home Depot store. That's not good. But there is a real shortage of employees at almost all our local stores and customer service takes a hard hit.

Well, to end on a more positive note, I used my newly repaired DIY pallet buster to break down that really nice pallet I picked up yesterday. As I have said, there are very few pallets that I use my pallet buster on for break downs, but when the right pallet comes around, the right tool can be the pallet buster. I broke down that good pallet in about 5 minutes and only broke one board in the process. When you get the right pallet, the pallet buster can be a great tool.

 

[gtaus]

The other day I built a V-shaped pallet firewood rack for the fire ring out in the backyard. I split all the wood in one pile of rounds and filled up that first rack. Today, I started splitting rounds from my second pile, but I have nowhere to store the split wood at present. So, I am thinking about building a storage rack to put next to a shed. Something like this...

The idea is that new storage rack on the side of the shed would be more permanent and hold a lot more wood. I'm thinking it would be an easy pallet project because they just used full pallets and tied them together with some support boards. How easy is that?

I think I got more projects than time or energy to do everything. But it sure is nice to clean up those piles of rounds sitting out in the yard where I cut down the trees.

 

[Sally PB]

Just to make sure I know what I'm looking at, did you build a wood frame, attach it the wall, and slip in the plastic dish?

Exactly.

Home Depot is the only big box store in my town that will thread pipe for the customer. Unfortunately, the older gentleman at Home Depot that rethreaded the pipe for me told me that Home Depot is phasing out that service. What they want to do is sell you pre-cut and pre-threaded pipe for 3X the cost. Our local Home Depot still has a pipe threading machine, but according to the guy at Home Depot, you won't find any pipe threading machines in the larger Home Depots in the larger cities.

I really doubt the HDs near me offer that service. That's just too... customer service-y. I'll have to ask at the local hardware store to see if they offer it.

The small business where I buy my chicken feed has a sign in the window saying they make custom hydraulic hoses. I think that's cool. Their customer base is mostly farmers. They also ask me if I need the 50 lb bag of feed carried out to my car.

One disadvantage of reaching my age is that I remember better days with good customer service, and I miss customer service these days when I probably need it even more. I hate to keep thinking things were better when I was younger, but I think they were.

I am very sure things were better when I was younger. Like you, I'm getting to the age where the service is as important as the goods.

I really feel for the gentleman in your HD store. I have been the person trying to cover more than one person's job.

We had a saying at work: Two people can do the work of three, if they hustle. But one person cannot do the work of two people. That was proved true to me many times.

 

[gtaus]

I really feel for the gentleman in your HD store. I have been the person trying to cover more than one person's job.

I try not to complain about any one particular employee when I don't know the situation at the store. Given there are about half the employees at the store compared to a few years ago, I often wonder if the remaining employees are working double duty yet still only getting paid for one job - if you know what I mean. Also, many stores seem to have new employees every month, so I doubt they are retaining good people.

I have been painting my chicken coop as I have been upgrading the old rotted OSB with better quality pallet wood, like for the trim work on the coop. It's a work in progress. This past weekend, I took some used paint cans into our local Fleet store to have them shake up the cans of paint in their machines.

I talked to the lady in the paint department, and she refused to shake up the paint for me. I asked her why she would not do it considering they have 3 shaker machines behind the counter. She told me that one of the other employees had shaken up a can of paint and the top came off and made a mess everywhere, and she was not going to clean it up if it happened to her. Then she asked me if I wanted to clean up the mess if the paint can leaked! I just said I only came into the store to have my paint cans shaken up like I have been doing for the past 35 years. Well, she offered to give me some free stir sticks, but she would not shake the paint. I told her that stir sticks are great after the paint has been shaken, but it's not very effective to if the paint is not first shaken up.

Then she told me that it was store policy not to shake up used paint cans. Really? I asked, when did that policy change? I did not tell her that I was in the week before with used paint cans and the older guy working the paint counter shook them up for me with no problem. Anyways, she said it was a long standing policy not to shake up used paint cans. Then she told me that she would refuse to shake up my paint cans and walked away from me into the back room!

Well, I still needed the paint shaken up so I could paint the coop, so I went up front to the customer service desk and asked to talk to a manager. The manager came up, I explained what had happened, she told me there was no store policy about used paint cans, and she went back there with me to the paint counter (the other employee was nowhere to be seen) and the manager shook the paint cans up for me. I thanked her and left.

Anyways, on Tuesday I went back to the Fleet store and asked to talk to the overall store manager. He was a nice guy and I told him that I was very happy with the associate manager who helped me when the paint department employee would not. I said I thanked the manager personally, but thought I would make the extra effort to tell her boss that his associate manager saved the day for the store in my eyes.

I also mentioned that I knew the paint employee as she has been working there for a long time and in the past, she had been very helpful. But I did not appreciate being asked if I wanted to clean up a mess in the event that their machines failed and leaked paint all over, that she had attempted to mislead me about store policy that did not exist, and that the employee walked away from me in a huff.

My goal was to compliment the manager who helped me, and to ask the store manager if they had a problem with their paint shaker machines that the employees were afraid to use.

Well, the store manager told me that there had been a big spill a few weeks ago when a new employee failed to pound the lid down on a brand new can of paint, that they had machines with levers to lock down the lid but the new employee did not use them correctly, and it did make a big spill mess. But there was certainly no policy about not shaking up used cans, they do it all the time, and he said if they have to tint a paint can they have to remove the lid and put it back on. He also said that it was wrong of the employee to ask me if I wanted to clean up a mess and that she walked away in huff. But he was very thankful that I came in to talk to him about the situation and that he would certainly compliment the associate manager and work with the employees to make them feel more comfortable with their machines.

So, that's my story about customer service at our local Fleet store. I took the time to talk to the store manager because, like I told him, I have been buying products from them for over 35 years and I appreciate good customer service and it has value to me. That is what keeps me coming back to their store. And I want to continue that relationship.

Well, I hope the associate manger gets a good compliment passed on to her from her boss, and I hope the employees get some better training and/or upgrades to the shaker machines so they feel comfortable using them. I'm sure it's no fun being stuck using a machine that you are afraid to use for any reason.