Pallet and Crates Wood

[Sam777]

Hello Group,

So I can get free discarded pallets and crates from my job. A lot of these crates come from china and somtimes the wood looks like it is from some nice type of wood (no idea what type). The wood of the crates is about 3/8" X 3" wide very roughly cut.

My question is: is it worth buying a low end thickness planer to smooth that wood to about 1/4" of so? Of course I will have to spend time outside of the work hours to dismantle these pallets and creates.

The only planer I have used was a Sears low end one and not a thickness planer.

If you think this is worth doing, my next question would be what type of planer?

Thank you all 

Edited February 16, 2017 by Sam777

[Sycamore67]

No....IMHO

 

I am concerned with pallets and crates as I do not know how they were treated or with what. When you plane and sand them, you put a lot of the dust in the air.

 

Is it OK...probably but for me not worth the risk or worry. Many people do use them, just not me.

[WayneMahler]

I have recovered some nice wood from pallets for smaller projects. It all depends on what they were used for though. Anything marked for vegetables etc I stay away from. Shipping is another story though. 

[Charles Henry]

I've got a ton of reclaimed pallet wood to work with. But like Sycamore said, be careful when sanding them. Sometimes they are treated with a lot of chemicals, and you don't wanna breath that stuff in.

[hawkeye10]

When I was working at Nissan here in Tenn. the pallets that came loaded with parts from Japan had some very nice wood in them. They crushed all of them and wouldn't let you take any home. It was sickening. 

[tomsteve]

you should buy a planer anyways. I have a thread going on constructing the dome clock. I purchased the lumber S3S- surfaced 3 sides with one edge left in the rough.

3/4" thick. im able to rip the lumber in half on the table saw and finish it to 1/4" with the planer and saving a LOT of money over purchasing all the lumber already 1/4" thick.

 

it is fun and enjoyable to make lumber from pallets and rough sawn lumber, but theres something important to consider:

a planer and jointer go hand in hand for the task. one face of the lumber needs to be flattened before planning. if it isn't flattened, a planer can plane any warp,cup, or wave into the wood. a jointer flattens one face, then the planer makes both surfaces parallel.

 it is possible,however, to built sled of the planer to flatten lumber. there are quite a few videos/articles on the www showing how.

 

as for the pallet wood, something to consider is the moisture content. beings how I worked in a pallet shop, most pallets are constructed from quite green lumber.

however, pallets that are shipped from other countries have to be treated to kill any bugs that can be in the wood and that's done 2 different ways; either heat treating, which there should be a stamp on the pallet indicating its been heat treated.

or with chemicals.

 

what type of planer? welp, I suggest the highest quality you can afford. now, the dewalt 734/735 get the best reviews for benchtop planers. but there are others out there that work pretty good. I have a  delta tp305 that's over 10 years old and has a LOT of use on it. the downfall is the knives- the edges don't last long on hardwoods.

cutech is a new company that has a line of planers. the model 40100H-CT is called a spiral cutter head, but its more of a segmented. instead of 13" blades, it has inserts. leaves a great finish and its pretty nice in the even that a nick occurs- which always does on planer knives, instead of having all knives have a nick and needing sharpening/replacing, the insert that is nicked can get rotated to a new cutting edge.

 

what I know of my delta and read of others, it seems that all but the dewalt benchtop planer snipe.

 

as for low end planers, that's hard to say what will happen purchasing something inexpensive. planers and inexpensive don't really go together. are there replacement parts and blades available?

imo, id suggest either cruising craigslist for a used dewalt or look into the cutech planers.

 

one other thing to consider:

other than the dewalt, quite a few tool company names can be on the exact same planer- looking at a model of the cutech and rikkon, one model is identical with quite a different price. a rigid and craftsman model look identical,too.

[Jim McDonald]

Fastest way to disassemble a pallet is a sawzall down the stringers.  You get the good wood and leave the nails behind. I have found book matched ash, oak and maple in some of the ones I get at work.

[amazingkevin]

i enjoy downsizing wood .i think i need new blades though.Never tryed pallets.

 

Hello Group,

So I can get free discarded pallets and crates from my job. A lot of these crates come from china and somtimes the wood looks like it is from some nice type of wood (no idea what type). The wood of the crates is about 3/8" X 3" wide very roughly cut.

My question is: is it worth buying a low end thickness planer to smooth that wood to about 1/4" of so? Of course I will have to spend time outside of the work hours to dismantle these pallets and creates.

The only planer I have used was a Sears low end one and not a thickness planer.

If you think this is worth doing, my next question would be what type of planer?

Thank you all 

i enjoy downsizing wood .i think i need new blades though.Never tryed pallets.

[Charles Henry]

I had a buddy of mine make me this nice little "Pallet Destroyer" tool I call it. It works quite well! Harder wood requires a more abrupt and forceful shove though, doesn't give the wood time to bend and split, and only if it has 2 nails, not 3, or at least not a wide board with 3 nails.

 

I kind of enjoy disassembling it and pulling the nails out myself.

 

Video: https://www.facebook.com/charles.henry.146/videos/10154328897180866/

 

And all the wood after disassembling two 8 foot pallets XD

[blights69]

Do your bit and recycle the pallets I have used them for years on different projects as for the dust issue all wood you sand creates dust so do as you would normally and mask up issue of dust in air resolved. You get some real good wood sometimes from a pallet why let it get crushed or burnt it is a waste of usable material. As for a planer/thicknesser I do not use one i keep the lumber at the thickness it comes off the pallet I just sand it smooth sometimes I may put an electric plane on a board if I am struggling to sand it  but I have no need to plane down the thickness on most projects I do with pallet wood so I keep as it is. Happy recycling to you   and as Jim said cut straight down stringers take the wood leave the stubs and nails behind 

[Sam777]

thank you all for the reply /comments.

Now you got me concerned about chemicals in addition to the dust.

I will think twice about sanding/planning these Chinese crates

Thanks to all

[Sam777]

you should buy a planer anyways. I have a thread going on constructing the dome clock. I purchased the lumber S3S- surfaced 3 sides with one edge left in the rough.

3/4" thick. im able to rip the lumber in half on the table saw and finish it to 1/4" with the planer and saving a LOT of money over purchasing all the lumber already 1/4" thick.

 

it is fun and enjoyable to make lumber from pallets and rough sawn lumber, but theres something important to consider:

a planer and jointer go hand in hand for the task. one face of the lumber needs to be flattened before planning. if it isn't flattened, a planer can plane any warp,cup, or wave into the wood. a jointer flattens one face, then the planer makes both surfaces parallel.

 it is possible,however, to built sled of the planer to flatten lumber. there are quite a few videos/articles on the www showing how.

 

as for the pallet wood, something to consider is the moisture content. beings how I worked in a pallet shop, most pallets are constructed from quite green lumber.

however, pallets that are shipped from other countries have to be treated to kill any bugs that can be in the wood and that's done 2 different ways; either heat treating, which there should be a stamp on the pallet indicating its been heat treated.

or with chemicals.

 

what type of planer? welp, I suggest the highest quality you can afford. now, the dewalt 734/735 get the best reviews for benchtop planers. but there are others out there that work pretty good. I have a  delta tp305 that's over 10 years old and has a LOT of use on it. the downfall is the knives- the edges don't last long on hardwoods.

cutech is a new company that has a line of planers. the model 40100H-CT is called a spiral cutter head, but its more of a segmented. instead of 13" blades, it has inserts. leaves a great finish and its pretty nice in the even that a nick occurs- which always does on planer knives, instead of having all knives have a nick and needing sharpening/replacing, the insert that is nicked can get rotated to a new cutting edge.

 

what I know of my delta and read of others, it seems that all but the dewalt benchtop planer snipe.

 

as for low end planers, that's hard to say what will happen purchasing something inexpensive. planers and inexpensive don't really go together. are there replacement parts and blades available?

imo, id suggest either cruising craigslist for a used dewalt or look into the cutech planers.

 

one other thing to consider:

other than the dewalt, quite a few tool company names can be on the exact same planer- looking at a model of the cutech and rikkon, one model is identical with quite a different price. a rigid and craftsman model look identical,too.

 

Tom,

I got the planning idea from your post. I LIKE what you are doing by splitting lumber and making thinner stock

Thank you very much for the lengthy reply. I really appreciate the time you took to explain.

thank you

Sam

[sullyscroller]

I have used wood from pallets and crates for years and not had any issues with the chem. I started with a dewalt planer and got years of great service from it. When it finally gave up the ghost 2 years ago I bought a Porter cable 12" at lowes for less than $300 figuring that would be fine for my needs. I have used it daily for those 2 years with very little problems. If I was to estimate how much wood I've run thru it  would easily be over 100,000 linear ft. Most of the pallet wood I get is from a vinyl supply comp. and the boards are 12' long. every 2 weeks I pick up around 3-4 hundred boards and run them thru the planer after pulling the nails. I'm tough on my tools as far as working them hard, I don't give them much of a break!!! On the PC planer the blades cost $30 to replace vs $60 on the dewalt. I have resharpen my blades at least a dozen times. Most of my wood is pine but I do run Hardwoods as well thru the PC planer. There is one really nice feature with the dewalt in that it has a built in dust system that can be hooked up to a cyclonic collector. Hope this helps and wasn't to long winded.

 

sully

[Phantom Scroller]

I use pallet wood for signs for garden mainly and try to get the nice clean ones and I have a thicknesser planer to run them through and they look like new wood after.   Roly

[CharleyL]

Most standard shaped pallets are safe. Just look closely for stamps indicating a treatment or evidence of chemical stains before deciding to use them. Imported pallets should be avoided if you will be sanding the wood from them, but I managed to get several very large machinery crates from Europe that I made a 9' X 12' bicycle barn for my kids from. Only a few pieces of that barn was made from locally sourced lumber. That was about 45 years ago and the last time that I went past my old house it is still being used as a garden tool storage shed. The framing isn't standard 16 or 24 on center, because the framing on the crates wasn't and I used most pieces uncut, but it was a cheap storage place for the bicycles. I bought a small discontinued lot of shingles for it for about 1/3 of what they were normally selling for and had two bundles left. Two gallons of paint on special sale and it was finished,. for less than $50. The kids did the painting.

 

If you want some really good wood from very heavily made pallets, make friends with someone at a printing shop. They get 3' X 4' but sometimes about 2' X 3' pallets with stacks of cut sheets of paper on them, and the pallet wood is all American, usually rough sawn 5 or 6/4 for the tops, but easier to pull the nails out of. The vertical support pieces are frequently 4" X 6" rough sawn red or white oak or pine and the tops can be almost anything domesticly grown. I got some great looking figured cherry, ash, and even black walnut from some of these pallets. You will be doing them a favor by keeping the wood out of their dumpster, but they won't store them for you for very long. Plan on stopping by for the pallets at least two times per week, thank them each time, and take whatever they have saved for you. You can later discard or burn anything that isn't quite up to your standards. You have to be willing to help them get rid of all they have, or they will start putting them in the dumpster again.

 

I once worked for a printing press importer and I brought home every one of these pallets that they emptied. That was 18 years ago and I'm still sometimes using some of the wood from those pallets. As an importer, the company that I worked for only used enough paper to test and demonstrate the presses, so they used much less paper than most printing shops, but I still got 1-2 pallets per week most weeks. 

 

Charley

Edited February 17, 2017 by CharleyL

[Sparkey]

I bought a Cutech jointer with the spiral cutting head. If I was going to buy a planer I think I would get the Cutech with the spiral cutting head. Check them out along with reviews.