Woodworking

the Philippines was just a random tropical place off the top of my head, but you get my drift. there are indeed a lot of flimsy pine pallets out there. but there are good ones mixed in, you just have to keep your eyes open.
 
But, I was in the PI, in charge of people building pallets.

They'd bring their lunch in a folded up leaf. Rice, with some meat/fish.

I'd go to the chow hall.
 
There's a local pallet works that in addition to building pallets recycles them .

They run those heavy 1" oak pallets through a resaw /dissassembley saw that cuts nails and all .The light weights from the recycled lumber which are maybe 3 /8" thick which they pile bricks,fertilizer etc. on and are only made for one time usage .

There are actually people who gather up those heavy weights and sell them for a buck or two a pop to recyclers .
 
Porkbrick said:
thanks all. just regular shipping pallets Butch. ive got a pile of really beautiful quartersawn oak stashed for the next project.
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i finally got an excuse to use that quartersawn oak. needed a small stand to put our snakes cage on. i wanted it to match the other one as they are right next to each other. the oak hat some active beetle infestations, bummer. the boards are all only 1/2" thick so i decided to burn them with a torch in the hope that the heat will penetrate through and kill the bugs. then i hit it with a nylon brush to give it a neat texture. the legs are wine barrel staves like the other table, burnt to match the top. im pleased with how it turned out.
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im really happy with the texture that the burning and brushing left. funny enough, all the boards came off the same pallet and after taking it apart i was able to put them all in the order they were sawn off the log. pretty unusual to find 8 perfectly matched, sequential, quartersawn boards off one pallet.
 
Sometimes people try to join long boards together, edge joining, but don't have the skills or tools to do it, so it comes out looking half Azz bad. By emphasizing differences, like with what you have done with the table, accentuating the irregularity with intentional gaps and varying dimensions and such, the results can be much more pleasing than falling short of a goal to make things real perfect tight looking. The naturalness of irregularity is pretty cool, but really not so easy to pull off.
 
thank you. the thing i like about using recycled wood and pallets in particular is that it comes with a history and with character. to loose that would be a shame. when you have to work with the imperfections it forces you to work around them and the outcome is something unique and interesting, plus the wood is free;)
 
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