pallets to adirondack chair

[trojan62]

hi all,
this is my second adirondack chair that i have made out of pallet wood, it came out much better, due to a slightly different design, you can see the stack of pallet wood in two of the pictures.
the project took about 4 days which involved a hell of a lot of sanding and filling, but beggers cant be choosers and it was about my budget £0 which is always a good thing. i printed the plans i got online to full size and then made proper plywood templates of the parts so i can use gain and again. this chair is for my sister who liked the first one i did.
its all done apart from the finishing, which i think my sister would prefer to be painted a nice green colour.

hope you like it and can see what can be done with some pallet wood with a bit of work.

cheers

chris......

 

[AndyT]

I like that a lot!

Just the thing for when the sun comes out, under a tree, a nice glass of something on the flat level arm, reflecting on a job well done.

 

[Fishandchips]

Really nice that chis and for no money too just your time.

How thick was the pallet planks please and also where did you get the plans from.

Cheers

Garry

 

[marcros]

you must get better pallets around your way than I do!

good to see what can be achieved using them.

 

[graduate_owner]

Well done Trojan - that's sensible use of pallets. They are a real pain to dismantle without splitting though - or do you know of an easy way? If you do, please pass it on.

A friend of mine has installed a bio-mass type boiler - he is a manager of a builders' merchant and they get loads of pallets which used to get burned on the yard. Now he puts the pallets in his boiler, gets free heat, and the nails go for scrap a few times each year. It's still not the best use, but certainly better than just wasting them.

I've been using pallet wood for making picket style fencing, and so I don't need to sand it. It takes volumes of wood preservative though.

We bought some wardrobes and chests of drawers from Leekes a few years ago. (OK, I know I should have made my own but I wasn't retired then, and our MFI ones just hadn't stood the test of time - strange that - in fact they were hardly standing at all, having been moved a few times). They looked nice in the showroom, and were on special offer. When they were delivered and paid for, we removed the acres of bubble wrap to find that they were not quite as nice as the display ones, but still quite nice-ish. The enclosed leaflet stated that the furniture was made in Indonesia (or thereabouts) from pallets and other recyclable things.


They are made from hardwood, no idea what, and have a large number of holes and black stains where the nails were in their former life. They also have dozens of inserted plugs, to cover areas where the holes must have been a bit too big to just leave there (plugs about 1 cm wide and up to 5 cm long). These defects may have been in the display versions as well, but I didn't notice them. Or perhaps the store was being a bit naughty in displaying one thing and selling another - either way they certainly had better on display than we had delivered.

They might not suit a new-build but they actually look fine in our converted barn, and it shows what can be done with recycled timber, cheap labour and probably, as Trojan62 said, a hell of a lot of sanding. Favourite file - True Grit??

K

 

[stevenw1963]

cracking idea & use of ''throw-away'' wood.

Nice one.

 

[Melinda_dd]

That's a really cool chair .... what makes it better is that it's a pallet chair!

my brother and i are both into recycling pallets (and are constantly trying to outdo each other with what we can make)
pictures of mine to follow as soon as my glue thaws in the workshop!

 

[barkwindjammer]

Now THAT is a chair, bloody awesome mate, do you have dimensions/drawing to go with it?

 

[SteveB43]

Really nice chair, good use of what would be throwaway wood, but an awful lot of sand paper, echoing Trojan's comment I guess...
Pallets are quite hard to come by methinks, there's a fair bit of £££ tied up in the recycling, movement and re-using these, and the one's I've seen only to be thrown away when they're damaged beyond repair.
The few I've had have been dumped on the roadside or fly-tipped, but luckily were in a good state. They now form the majority of my outside log store.

 

[graduate_owner]

pallets may be more difficult to come by now - it's a while since I was collecting them. I did once see in my local builders yard some pallets which were used for delivering plasterboard, 8 x 4 ft, and was amazed when the owner said I could have them. There's a lot of useful lengths in one of those. I haven't used them yet - still deciding what for. (Adirondack chair maybe).

Also there used to be a guy at our local monthly auction who sold 8 - 12 ft timbers, random widths and always battened together to make a board about 2 ft wide. Turns out they were tops, sides etc of dismantled packing crates. They used to sell for about £5 - £8 depending on size, but I'd love to know where he was getting them from. (Probably free).

K

 

[No skills]

If I salvage anything thats fairly rough I always buzz it over with a cheapo electric plane before I do too much with it, you can get one for very little now (£25 odd). Unless you hit a nail or some other metal (which you wont if you go over the timber first!) then the blades last quite a while and you end up useing a lot less abrasive for finishing and its very quick to do.

 

[Heath Robinson]

I really like that, I think pallet wood and scaffold plank have a lot of potential.