What's the fascination with making things from old pallets?

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With every new trend there are always people so determined to be trendy and appear crafty that they loose the whole point or that the end result becomes useless due to bad materials.

I have seen a man build furniture and extend his house using very bad quality wood from pallets and recykled half rotten softwood weatherboards. All of his builds are pretty much worthless and useless due to bad materials. All while he paid a premium prize for birch firewood delivered behind his barn. All while he cut dwn his own birch trees and first left the logs to rot and then gave them away for firewood.
A customer once wanted me to replace rotten logs in his all-recykled old loghouse with logs that were so rotten that there was grass growing out of them and I coundn't detect any grain direction. Only the frost held the replacement logs together. For him it was very important that everything was recykled so we had quite a battle over those logs.

When I get hold of free pallets and useful dumpster wood I usually bring it home. I use the ordinary not so good pallets to keep my locally harvested woodstacks off the ground and to move scrap iron and old machines around using my tractor and front loader and for all kinds of temporary applications where I don't want to waste good wood. Wood of lesser quality is built into the launching ramp for my boat and used for temporary roofs over my woodstacks and all kinds op temporary uses. Everything that isn't good for anything else becomes firewood.

However there is the occasional pallet with long lenghts of pine one inch boards or full size 2x4s or even 5x5s or big sheets of undamaged plywood and the ocasional piece of good dumpster wood. When I encounter such a bonus pallet among the junk I always take it apart carefully and put the wood in storage in the tractor shed attic for future projects. That recykled wood can be found built into various things and buildings around home and even once in a job for a customer.

For me the whole thing is about making the best possible use out of every grade of materials.
 
JSW":1hpkdboc said:
What's the fascination with making things from old pallets?
It satisfies my creative side.

I'm no high-end Bespoke Craftsman Carpenter, I'm a humble Joiner by trade, and although I consider myself talented enough in that respect, I bow my head in reverence to some of the truly gifted individuals pursuing their trades. I mean, I DO make decent projects from time to time, but lack of money means a Jay Bates workshop, and hardwoods in particular, are not on the agenda. I make what I can, with materials I can source cheaply, and machinery/tooling that I consider worth the investment, with the little disposable income I have.

So, pallet wood = creative satisfaction.

Plus. It's free :wink:

JS

Unless the definition of Joiner has changed, you've nothing to be 'umble about! :D
 
I just took delivery of these...

I think there's about 60-70 of 'em.

2017_03_05th_Pallets.jpg
 
Well I think we are all missing one important issue here. I think we should congratulate the OP on his superb modern sculpture, surely good enough for display in international exhibitions and a definite contender for Hepworth, Founders or Broomhill. Could easily win £30,000 provided it doesn't rot away in the meantime.

K
 
I'm a FLT driver, Have been for 30 years. In my experience, the hardwood pallets are from Japan, Solid spacer blocks. Euro pallets from, well, Europe surprisingly, These have mostly chipboard spaces and are fast grown softwood. The metre square blue pallets are owned by CHEP who will come after you like a Rottweiler if you try to sell them on and they find out about it.
All pallets coming into this country have to have some form of treatment to kill the bugs in them. Most common is heat treatment (HT) or chemical treated. A brand is applied to show what treatment, who treated it, country of treatment and the date, all in code form. Hope this helps and you haven't fallen asleep yet.
 

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