Show Me Your Pallet Projects!

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Earlier this spring I posted that I made a pallet wood trellis for Dear Wife's bitter melon plants. I just posted an update on the gardening thread, but since it also deals with the pallet wood trellis, I'll copy it here too for your consideration....

It's going to be hot here today. So, this morning Dear Wife and I went out to the raised beds and picked some food this morning.

Our very first batch of bitter melons! Aka, ampalaya in filipino. These are a tropical veggie and we are just glad to have gotten any here in northern Minnesota zone 3b. They would have gotten a little bigger in the tropical climate, but I guess these were ready for picking now....

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The longest bitter melon is 10 inches and the shortest is 5 inches, for comparison.

I made a sturdy trellis out of pallet wood 2X4's for the bitter melon to climb on this spring, and it has worked out pretty well for Dear Wife. She is very happy with the results. They are a taste of home of the tropics even here in Minnesota. :hugs

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:idunno I have been thinking about making some kind of pallet wood utility shelf for all my tool batteries for the garage. There are many YouTube videos on making power tool shelves, but they all are too small for me. They might hold 5 or 6 drills, and as many batteries, but not much more. My situation is that I have been in the Ryobi 18v One+ system for so long, over 15 years, that I have over 43 batteries at last count. That is going to take a much bigger shelf than what I have seen on YouTube.

Another consideration is with that many batteries, I need to rotate them so they all get used and recharged periodically. I have been looking at a number of FIFO (First In First Out) shelves, but nothing seems right. Most of the FIFO shelves require the units to slide into place when the one in front is removed. Unfortanately for me, the batteries I have all have rubber pads to prevent the batteries from slipping. Makes sense if the battery is on the roof. You don't want it sliding off. But it makes it harder to move them on FIFO shelf.

Well, I have been digging through my pallet wood pile and pulling out good boards for a shelf. I was hoping to get inspiration from the wood itself, but I'm still coming up short of a plan. I don't even know if I should make a self-standing shelf for the workbench, or make it wall mounted.

One thing I am considering is making a shelf with pegs and pin holes, so you can adjust the shelf height to whatever you need. That might come in handy if I end up using the shelf for something other than batteries in the future. I did that for a utility food shelf, and we have adjusted a number of those shelves on it in the past two years. It's nice not having the shelves set and screwed in permanently. A shelf for canned goods does not take up as much room as a shelf for cereal boxes, for example. And bottled drinks might need a different height than the other two shelves.

:caf If anyone else had made a shelf system for their tool batteries and they like it, please let me know what you did. Right now, I'm thinking I will just bang something together to try it out, and maybe rebuild it later if/when I have a better idea of what I need/want. Sometimes you just have to get something into service before you know what changes you need to make.
 
gtaus said:
Right now, I'm thinking I will just bang something together to try it out, and maybe rebuild it later if/when I have a better idea of what I need/want. Sometimes you just have to get something into service before you know what changes you need to make.
Click to expand...
My thoughts exactly.

When I was setting up my desk, I just put everything on it. I figured out where the big stuff had to go. I sat down, started working. Oh, that needs to go here. Oops, too far; gotta be able to reach it sitting down.

One thing about shelves: don't put short/small things behind tall things. Either you can't find them, or you knock the big thing off trying to get the short thing over it. Hubby still needs to learn this about the refrigerator! :gig
 
Sally PB said:
One thing about shelves: don't put short/small things behind tall things. Either you can't find them, or you knock the big thing off trying to get the short thing over it. Hubby still needs to learn this about the refrigerator! :gig
Click to expand...

I hear you. I'm trying to come up with a FIFO (First In First Out) system for rotating my tool batteries but so far, no great flashes of inspiration have come to me. It's important to rotate the batteries because if you never use a battery, it can self-discharge so low that the battery charger will see the battery as defective and will not even attempt to recharge it. You could probably kill a battery faster by not using it compared to using and recharging a battery many times.

As to our refrigerator, far too often we practice the FISH (First In Still Here) system as things seem to get pushed to the back of the fridge and stay there. Believe it or not, I'm better at cleaning out the refrigerator than Dear Wife. Mostly I find stuff that we won't eat but is still good for the chicken bucket. At least it's not a total waste of leftovers. But every once in a while, something is too ripe and goes directly to the pallet wood compost bin where the chickens don't have access.

Of course, I say it's Dear Wife's failure to rotate the food in the fridge because before we were married, I never had any problems with food going bad in my fridge. Well, come to think of it, I probably never really had much of any food in the fridge before I was married. Pop cans and potato chips had a long shelf life... :lau
 
:caf I built a small shelf for my batteries. Not exactly what I was thinking, but maybe good enough for now. I slapped together a small shelf to sit on top of my workbench that matches the one I made years ago. Basically, doubled the shelf space for the 18v tool batteries. I have to clean up the workbench, load up the batteries on the shelves, and then snap a picture or two to upload later.

:idunno I have spent a lot of time considering what kind of shelf to build, where to put it, what to put on it, etc.... The problem is that my two car garage only has one open wall and that is the wall on the steps going up into the house. I don't feel good about adding a utility shelf on the steps. Also, I measured my current shelf, which is good for all my 18v batteries, but too small for the 40v batteries. I considered making the shelf deeper for the larger 40v batteries, but then you get into a shelf deep enough to hold the tools themselves. So, why not go a little bigger and make the shelf for the tools, too? I was suffering from paralysis by analysis. Today, I decided just to make something and see if it's good enough.

I started cleaning up the workbench, putting things away where they belong, and trying to find a new place for things that are recent purchases. It might take awhile, but I made some progress on cleaning up the bench this afternoon.

:clap Cleaning up and organizing all my stuff is one of my least favorite tasks. Having said that, after I find a place for everything and get the benchtop cleared, I feel so much better. Nothing like a clean bench top to encourage me to make/build/fix something that has been waiting for attention.
 

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