Easiest Way to Take Apart a Pallet Using Power Tools

Ready to get started on some free or cheap pallet projects? Once you have all of your pallets brought home get ready for some frustrating disassembly!

In this video I briefly discuss the method I have been using to take apart pallets to get useable wood. There are many other ways to do this very same thing but this has proved to be the quickest and easiest for me.

The first step is to just lay out the pallets on a flat surface and start making cuts on the inside of the outermost supports. Using a jig saw or circular say is best and you can quickly have those outside supports removed from the pallet. As with any pallet project, make sure you check for nails ahead of any cuts!

The next step is to use a Sawzall or reciprocating saw to free each slat from the middle support. I find this to the quickest way to get the most useable wood as long as you dont mind the nail head being left in the center of the board. Rock the slat back and forth to free up a small gap and slide the saw blade (metal cutting blade) between the slat and the support to cut the nails.

If you prefer to pull the center nails just slide in a pry bar to pop the slats off and then pound out and pull those center nails. Either way works just as well but I prefer to pull less nails!

Using this method you are left with a selection of 36"-39" slats that are ready to be used in any pallet project. Now if you are going to do more finishing on your final product like sanding or planning you obviously need to make sure to pull the center nails instead of cutting them with the Sawzall.

There are many other options out there such as pallet pullers and special pry bars. My suggestions is to take the money you would spend on that specialized tool and get yourself a good wonder bar or used Sawzall instead. These tools can be used for much more than just pallets and are a necessity for any homeowner.

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Create a Raised Bed Garden Using Pallet Wood 100 Free!

We are finally getting our square foot gardens setup.  I needed ways to save money and build some nice raised beds for the backyard. In this video, I go through the process that I used to tear down some pallets and create a couple of 3 x 6 raised-bed gardens. This is one of the first projects that I have done that was truly 100% free!


Please let me know if you have any questions.

Todd


For more on square foot gardening please visit  - http://www.melbartholomew.com/





This post has been shared on:  The Homestead Barn Hop, Simple Saturdays Blog Hop
, The Backyard Farming Connection Hop, HomeAcre Hop, Simple Lives Thursday

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Pallet Garden Update and FAQ How Did They Hold Up

How did the reclaimed pallet wood garden beds hold up? It has been a year since we have put these free raised beds into action and they have done us well so far. Throughout the last year this project has become fairly popular and there have been some common questions that I thought I would try to answer here.

Will the pallet wood  hold up to moister over the long term? This is a very valid concern and one that I, quite honestly, shared as well. They have only been through one year so far but as far as I can tell they have held up perfectly. I do not see any signs of rotting where the soil has been in contact with the wood and the outside of the wood has aged nicely. Only time will tell the full story here but I would guess we can get about 5 years out of these before we start noticing any issues.





Arent pallets treated with chemicals that are unsafe for your garden? The wood that we are using from the pallets was all heat treated and this is something you should look for when using it for food production. We also lined the first set of beds with greenhouse plastic since the wood had some oil staining on it we didnt want in the soil.





What soil mix are we using? Last year we decided to try the square foot gardening method with these raised beds. With that came using the Mels mix soil mixture that consists of 1/3 compost 1/3 peat and 1/3 vermiculite. This is a very nice soil mix however it can get pretty expensive to fill beds of this size and vermiculite is hard to source locally. We ended up having to order ours online  and it was not cheap! In an effort to keep costs down after we had already ordered the vermiculite we ended up probably not putting in enough compost and good nutrients and added more peat as a filler. Needless to say in the end the growth we had was not stellar. We were happy with our little gardens but this year we want to focus on filling them for less and increasing production.

I will have another article soon with our new method of soil fill for the four new pallet beds that I have just built, stay tuned for more on that. We are focusing on locally sourced and bulk materials rather than as much big box store products.





Do you put landscape cloth in the bottom of the beds? This question comes up often and then answer to that is yes and no. With the two original beds I put together I did line the bottom with cardboard before I filled it up. However, I do feel that this is largely unnecessary and I dont think it really serves a purpose.





Would you use screws rather than nails to construct these next time? I was surprised at how well the nails held up with the original two that I constructed and so I continued to use nails with the rest that I have built. The fact is, I suppose screws would hold better in the long run but that brings up the cost significantly since you need quite a lot of screws for each one. I used drywall nails that I had laying around for the first few and some roofing nails for the rest and they seem to hold up just fine.

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Music - "Epilogue" by Josh Woodward. Free download: http://joshwoodward.com/song/Epilogue

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