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The Green
Initiative (Part II)
Saturday, August 22nd, 2009
Take an ordinary Oak pallet
for example (Figure 1). This pallet has seen years
of rugged use but with a little elbow grease and
sweat equity any woodworker can transform an ugly
pallet such as this into a beautiful piece of
furniture or decorative accent that, when completed,
already looks like 100 years old. Using "found wood"
requires extra work and may result in an untimely
dull blade or nick in a jointer or planer blade, but
with proper preparation these issues can be
minimized.
My pallet was nailed together
with coated screw nails which made it nearly
impossible to disassemble without
breaking the coveted slats. So much for the
traditional hammer and pry bar technique. Another
approach was necessary to ensure maximum lumber
yield. First, I cut up the pallet using my Sawzall
into manageable pieces (Figure 2). After switching
to a metal cutting blade I cut the nails between the
slat and remaining cross member. Lastly, using a
small punch, I drove the nails out of the wood
slats. This technique certainly took more time but I
was able to salvage every slat on the pallet (Figure
3).
Processing the wood involved a
series of time-consuming yet very essential steps:
-
Brush each piece using a
wire brush or wire wheel chucked in a cordless
drill.
-
Inspect each piece for
residual metal or embedded dirt/stones.
-
Wash each piece using soap
and water and a stiff nylon bristle brush and
rinse thoroughly with a pressurized stream of
water.
-
Let dry and inspect again
for damaging embedded debris.
Once the wood is sufficiently
clean and ready for tooling use a hand plane or
jointer to smooth one side to ensure flatness. The
beauty of the wood now becomes apparent as evidenced
by the dark color streaks and blackened regions
surrounding each nail hole (Figure 3).
(Green
Initiative Part
I)
(Green
Initiative Part III)
(Green
Initiative Part IV)
Figure
1
Figure 2
Figure 3
If you have any
questions or comments about this blog entry please
do not hesitate to
send me an e-mail. Thanks and be
safe when working with tools!!!
Burgie
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Robert Burgoyne, also known as "Burgie",
has been doing woodworking for nearly 30
years. He started learning at an early
age in his grandfather's garage and
continued while working with his father
in construction. The hobby has now
become a business with Creative
Landscape Accents. Burgie builds
high quality woodworking projects for
the outdoors and also enjoys making
decorative accent pieces for inside the
house. While not working in his shop
doing woodworking Burgie enjoys
computers, restoring his old
1964
Chevy C60 2-ton dump truck and
riding his Harley-Davidson Road King
throughout beautiful Colorado.
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