Show Me Your Pallet Projects!

[chickengr]

I should make a shed for sheep. unfortunately I have to give up on some animals. feed and petrol went up and people still want live animals for free. I am getting 3 lambs soon. goats and sheep have plenty of free feed here (grass/bushes, etc.) and they are easier to look after. I will still keep chickens and ducks but not as many as I do now. I think I will not keep geese any more as it is not worth money and time. I feel very sorry about that but I have no choice. vietnammese pigs are leaving as well. I will keep only what I can feed. I also need more time for gardening.

 

[Molpet]

I should make a shed for sheep. unfortunately I have to give up on some animals. feed and petrol went up and people still want live animals for free. I am getting 3 lambs soon. goats and sheep have plenty of free feed here (grass/bushes, etc.) and they are easier to look after. I will still keep chickens and ducks but not as many as I do now. I think I will not keep geese any more as it is not worth money and time. I feel very sorry about that but I have no choice. vietnammese pigs are leaving as well. I will keep only what I can feed. I also need more time for gardening.

Yes I only keep/grow what I use anymore.

 

[gtaus]

I will keep only what I can feed. I also need more time for gardening.

Yes I only keep/grow what I use anymore.

The good thing about chickens, IMHO, is that they really don't take much time or effort to take care of. The fresh eggs are nice, but I get more value of my chicken run compost for gardening. But feed prices are going up again and I don't grow my own feed. We have been selling our excess eggs to cover the feed costs, and that helps. Not having to buy bags of compost at the big box store is where I really save money.

We have been talking about cutting back on the number of chickens I keep to just enough to cover our fresh egg needs for Dear Wife and myself. Maybe only 3 or 4 chickens in the near future.

We are both in our retirement years and have started downsizing just about every aspect of our lives. I am not so sure I like that, but we are no longer building for a future. That future is here, I guess.

On a more positive note, over the past ~5 years that I have had a backyard flock I have really changed a lot of the way we live. All our kitchen scraps and leftovers get fed to the chickens, almost all our paper products are shredded and used as deep bedding in the coop, the used deep bedding and just about everything organic from the property gets tossed in the chicken run for in place composting, the chicken run compost feeds my garden beds, the garden beds helps feed us, excess food and/or garden weeds get fed back to the chickens, etc... It's been a nice lifestyle change for us.

Most of my pallet projects have been building new raised garden beds because I have access to so much high-quality chicken run compost. Dear Wife has put in a new order for some more pallet wood flower planters this spring to replace our aging and falling apart half whiskey barrels. Even there, I use the chicken run compost in the planter soil mix. So much of what I currently do revolves around those chickens.

I hope to continue this lifestyle for more years, but this past winter I had some setbacks, so I understand the need or desire for cutting down on things. Just trying to live in the present and enjoy it. But I understand people wanting to, or needing to, cut back on obligations. Take care.

 

[Mads505]

Yeah, I only find them at our local Bobcat dealership. They get some equipment on special heavy duty long 2X4 pallets and I look specifically for the pallets that use those Torx Head screws. They are the easiest to disassemble with just a drill or impact wrench with the proper bit.

Every once in while I find special hardware like heavy duty lag screws with matching fender washers. I think they use them for tiedown straps...

View attachment 4317117View attachment 4317118

I have priced out some of those lag screws at about $1.00 each at our Fleet store. So, it's always a treat when I can find a pallet with 4, 6, or 8 sets of lag screws and fender washers.

Sometimes I salvage straps and ropes from their pallets. I guess it's just not worth their time to remove the hardware or tiedowns. But that's all to my benefit.

At any rate, if you have an industrial company where you live, you might be able to salvage some pallets like I do.

I'll have to look into that!

 

[gtaus]

Full Load of 2X4's on Pallet Run

I made it back to the Bobcat dealership to work on the remaining long pallets they had for free out in their back yard. I was all excited to get down to the bottom pallet which was 9X6 feet - all 2X4's. The top few pallets were also 2X4 pallets, but used the standard pallet nails to put them together. Good wood, just had to use the big crowbar to disassemble those pallets.

I worked myself down to the bottom long pallet (6X9 foot) and thought it was going to be the easiest because it had screws in it. Turns out, it ended up being the hardest pallet to disassemble. I thought they used those Torx Head screws for the bottom pallet, like the other pallets I disassembled a few days ago. Those Torx Head screws came out with no problem.

When I got down to the bottom pallet, I found out the pallet really was a Franken-build using both nails and screws. Unfortunately, the screw heads were overdriven down below the surface of the wood. When I got a close up look at those screw heads, they were not Torx Head screws. They were some kind of hybrid screw as in the middle of this picture...

My Philipps bits did not work very good and would not fit. I found a square bit that fit in the center, but the screw would just spin around in the hole and not back out. It's almost as if those were one-way screws and not meant to be taken out. I don't know if that is possible, but those hybrid screws would not back out (unscrew) and stayed put in the wood.

Here is an AI picture very close to what I was dealing with on that bottom pallet. The screws were about 3 inches long, thin, and have very fine threads. I guess they can be loaded up into a pneumatic gun and shot into the pallet like nails...

In the end, I had to disassemble the 2X4's using my large pry bar. That was a workout, I can tell you. Those screws held were holding fast and it took a lot of Armstrong to disassemble that pallet. But the wood was good, so I kept at it until everything was apart and loaded up into my old utility trailer...

You will notice that the screws and nails are all still in the 2X4's. I know I can pound the nails out, but I'm not sure what to do with those hybrid screws. I'm sure I will have to pound them as well, but I am hoping that after a few smacks with the hammer that the threads will grab into the wood and I can back them out with my impact driver. If not, I guess I'll have to treat them like nails and pound them out and use a crowbar to remove them.

On the way out of the yard, I noticed there were a number of 2X8 double blocks sitting on the side. I loaded them up and tossed them on top of my load...

Most of those 2X8 double blocks had good wood. They are about 24 inches long. I have used them for lots of projects, so I picked them as well.

Obviously, some 2X4 wood was in better condition than others. But mostly the wood was usable for my projects. Granted, you would not purchase some of those 2X4's at a big box store, but I got enough quality wood to estimate about $250 in 2X4's on this load. I worked my butt off on this run, but still, it was only about 90 minutes of work. Seemed longer, but it was not.

 

[Three Stents]

this is what I use to break down pallets.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CB6KQQ3T?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_6&th=1