Source of free lumber

[Cherryville Chuck]

My son works for a mechanical contracting company that does plumbing and duct work. They have a duct making side in their shop and get pallets of galvanized and stainless sheets. He brought a stack home a few nights ago about 4 feet high or so. They are 8 and 10 feet long and 4 feet wide. Each runner and cross member are doubled. It was a fair bit of work to separate all of them and pull the nails (shown in the bucket photo). It’s econo and 3 common grade but will do for a couple projects I have. Pallets for sheet metal don’t get treated with chemical since they aren’t getting exported.

They also came wrapped with pallet wrap. This maybe to keep tannins and acids in the wood from staining the metal. Pulling the staples was a PITA until I took my oldest and crappiest pair of needle nose pliers and ground one tip to a chisel point. Even the embedded ones came out easy after that.

The company can’t get rid of enough of them to guys like me and they wind up burning lots.

[Herb Stoops]

Good show, Chuck, looks like mostly DF or HEM. Good for making jigs and such out of that you later discard. or framing in the garage/shop racks etc.
HErb

[smitty10101]

SCORE!!!!!

[Cherryville Chuck]

Good show, Chuck, looks like mostly DF or HEM. Good for making jigs and such out of that you later discard. or framing in the garage/shop racks etc.
HErb

It looked like a mix of DF, pine, and spruce. There might be a hemlock or two in the pile.It would be perfect for shelving. I have two projects for them. One is adding crosspieces between the center and king struts in my attic and building a walkway so that I can get over easily to the bathroom ceiling to add a couple more pot lights. I have 18" of insulation up there which makes stepping from ceiling joist to joist a little more difficult plus I don't like disturbing the batts which are crisscrossed to prevent air gaps.

The other job is adding an enclosure on the outside of my shop to house my DC and hopefully control the leakage from it better. It will also get rid of some of the noise and I can install a cyclone where the DC is currently located.

[Herb Stoops]

That is what I did ,put the DC and Cyclone out side in a shed, sure cuts down the noise.
HErb

[Nickp]

Chuck - 1...Pallet - 0

Nice going...!

[Cherryville Chuck]

Chuck - 1...Pallet - 0

Nice going...!

My shoulders are still aching from pulling nails and prying boards apart with the crowbars so I don't recommend you try it.

[Herb Stoops]

My shoulders are still aching from pulling nails and prying boards apart with the crowbars so I don't recommend you try it.

They have got that down pat with twist shank/ ring shank gun nails which are hard to pull. I finally resorted to sawing with a power saw either the cross pieces or the long pieces,which ever I wanted to sacrifice,then splitting the wood and using a visegrip to remove the nails. Even then some broke off and I just had to live with them pounded flush,and mark them so they were not hit by the saw. Visegrips can be used to turn out the twist shanks sometimes.
Herb

[Cherryville Chuck]

The long pieces weren't too bad. They only had about 5 nails holding them to each other. It was the cross members that caused most of the grief. They had 4 to 5 spirals holding to each pair of the four runners. I think the easiest way to part them would have been to have two 4 foot long or better saw horses and sit the runners of the palettes on them and hammer the cross members off with a 3 pound sledge. Luckily I have a long skookum crow bar which was the next best. A few of the cross members split trying to get a gap started but hammering them off might not work any better.

[HandyDan]

Those spiral nails are the worst. Just trying to pull the nail is a trying experience. I had a friend that resold pallets and repaired some. He had a machine that cut the nails when he wanted to save the pieces.

[Cherryville Chuck]

Some of the spirals have a varnish coating on them. There's enough friction going in that it softens or melts the varnish. Then it cools down and hardens again, making them stick even tighter. You could take a sawzall with a long hacksaw or demolition blade on it and cut through the joints like that Dan. That would save a lot of time and effort.

I know that if I was making the pallets I would have a form to load all the pieces into and then nail it so all the cross members should be in the same places, and these ones seemed to be uniform that way. If you needed specific lengths just measure one and see if the cross member lands there and hammer that joint apart if it does.

[DaninVan]

Cutting them up for firewood would be the extent of my energy investment...

[Herb Stoops]

I have a set of those small hole saws that lee Valley used to sell that were in a kit to remove broken Butt screws from door jams there were 3 sizes, 1/4",3/8",and 1/2" if I recall. They could be used to drill out nails ,then glue back a dowel to fill the hole.
Herb

[Cherryville Chuck]

Normally I would agree with you. A month or so ago when I was at the local HD the price for an 8' 2x4 was $9.95. Around the day my son dropped the palettes off I heard lumber dropped so I looked the price up on HD's website for that store and they had gone down to $7.18. Even with the price drop that was close to $200 worth of lumber, and not much lower quality than HD's has been lately. However, I expect construction lumber to keep dropping with interest rates rising and the high inflation we have putting downward pressure on housing starts.

[Herb Stoops]

Normally I would agree with you. A month or so ago when I was at the local HD the price for an 8' 2x4 was $9.95. Around the day my son dropped the palettes off I heard lumber dropped so I looked the price up on HD's website for that store and they had gone down to $7.18. Even with the price drop that was close to $200 worth of lumber, and not much lower quality than HD's has been lately. However, I expect construction lumber to keep dropping with interest rates rising and the high inflation we have putting downward pressure on housing starts.

Gotta remember the dollar is shrinking too, I wonder at the same rate? But Free is Free, and that good for now till the $=0.
HErb

[Stick486]

Cutting them up for firewood would be the extent of my energy investment... ;)

ditto...

[Bushwhacker]

A neighbor dropped of a truck load of used pallets. I took them apart and made some yard stuff out of them. Plus parts of Sandras dressing table I recently built is from old pallets.

Bushwhacker

[CharleyL]

When I worked for an offset printing press manufacturer, the pallets that paper came on was never treated with anything, and very heavy duty. Sometimes they were small pallets, but many times the standard size, all rough cut hardwoods though and sometimes up to 4"thick, and I don't remember any that were nailed together with coated nails. Some of my heaviest hardwood lumber stash is pieces of these pallets, which got trashed if I didn't take them. Make friends with a local printing company and get them to save some for you. Then make a weekly return to pick up what they saved. Even a small ma and pa shop can empty several pallets a week and I've never known a paper supplier who took them back.

Has anybody seen these? I have one and it pops the nails out of wood very quickly. I set the board on top of a trash can, put the barrel of the shooter over the exposed pointed end of the nail and pull the trigger. You do want to wear safety glasses when using one of these. The nails fly out of the wood and bounce back if they hit something just right. When helping my son renovate his house and save the baseboard, trim and 2 X 4's, I could keep up with his rip-out quite easily, and stack the cleaned pieces too. For bent nails, just slide the shooter over the nail and bend it straight before operating the trigger. Only curly bent require more attention.

Charley

amazon.com/s?k=pneumatic+nail+remover&crid=34WH7T1GL5QGB&sprefix=pneumatic+nail%2Caps%2C85&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-doa-p_3_14

[Cherryville Chuck]

I couldn't make your link work Charley. Is this it? https://www.amazon.com/Air-Locker-Naile ... B01H5RNHPA

[DaninVan]

A neighbor dropped of a truck load of used pallets. I took them apart and made some yard stuff out of them. Plus parts of Sandras dressing table I recently built is from old pallets.

Bushwhacker

Wow! Well done, That Man!!

[Cherryville Chuck]

I've seen some that were made from oak and a few other hardwoods I couldn't readily identify. There are some good pieces in some of the heavier duty ones.

[CharleyL]

https://www.amazon.com/Air-Locker-Naile ... B01H5RNHPA

Yes, that's it !!! I also bought an extra piston/plunger....just in case. I've had mine for over two years, and most of my son's house major remodel, and I haven't needed the spare piston/plunger yet. I give mine a couple of drops of compressor oil in the air inlet each time before using it, and have never had a problem with it. Sure is a fast way to de-nail a board. It does dent around the nail on the driven side, from the end of the nailer rod pushing out past the end of the gun about 3/16", so shooting the nail out from the face side (finishing nails) is not always the best idea, as sometimes the finishing nails, being recessed, will splinter the face of the board when driven out from the back pointed end. Decide before hand from experimenting, which is best for what you are doing, and the final use of the board. Again, I wear safety glasses !!! And I place the board to be de-nailed on top of a trash can so the nail that is exiting goes direct into the trash can. Having a little trash in the can ahead of time will cushion the nail hit to help keep it from bouncing back. The nails do bounce around when they exit the wood and can hit you if they bounce just right. I will likely wear a face shield over my safety glasses the next time that I use it.

Charley