My wife wants to do a wood wall in our guest room & her company has a large amount of pallets available at no cost.

Apart from the effort to disassemble, is there any issue with using pallet wood for this purpose?

What was hauled on them? Anything hazardous, no way!

quote:

Originally posted by petr:
What was hauled on them? Anything hazardous, no way!

She works for a small boutique jewelry company, so I'm 99% nothing hazardous.

No expert here or environmentalist but I'd be concerned if those were pallets that were used multiple times if and what has been absorbed into the wood.

Most pallets I have seen are pretty rough so splinters could be an issue also.

Try Google...

In addition to the items on the pallets, there are various treatments some use on pallets to prevent mold and bugs.

Personally, I wouldn't...

Have you taken apart a pallet yet?

They are not made for easy disassembly.

One of my woodworking had a article on using them as flooring. The result was very nice floor in the front room. He already had a surface planer and router table. The only expenses were nails, sealer and time

Thanks for the quick replies. Will have to find out if they were multiple use pallets, or if they were new on original delivery.

I've disassembled a couple well-worn pallets & it is a bit of a pain, but not as bad as I was expecting. Finding the seemingly random nails throughout was unexpected, especially before putting a saw to it.

I recently pulled about 200 staples out of one, thinking I would make something out of it. After a couple months looking at the wood, finally tossed it in the dumpster.

If you are looking for an excuse to buy:

• a hydraulic spreader
  
• a thickness planer, and
  
• a metal/nail detector,
  

and you have a lot of time on your hands, I'd say go for it. If you are more thinking crowbar/working with the raw wood, not in a million years.

Most are made from southern yellow pine. If you're really bent on that look then save yourself the bug and disassembly hassle and just go buy some 2x4's, throw a bunch of rocks at them, drive over them a few times, cut to size and brush 'em with a flat sealer or gloss if she prefers.

Thanks again the further responses & suggestions.

The appeal here was the copious amount of free material, especially in the current environment & with the 13% pay cut we took at work.

Will have to investigate & see what shape the pallets are in & possibly their origin/prior use.

Pallets are a relatively poor grade of wood, think “Dixie cup disposable”.

Around here many are part oak, some poplar and a miscellaneous mix of other stuff.

If I had a slew of kids to keep busy and a pile of pallets I would pass out the hammers and pry bars and tell them to go at it.

Assembly of pallets often (as noted) involve air powered nail guns or staple guns. Twist shank or ring shank to reduce pull out seems to work. They break off and are, as a result, hard on the power tools to follow. A circular saw hitting an embedded nail throws sparks and bits of metal. That may include bits of teeth from the blade.

All of that said, your labor being free, pallets being free, sure, it will work. I suggest sorting your wood by type. You might even screw down the new flooring with a slight counter sink to the screws. When the day comes that you want to change it, they come out real easy.

quote:

Originally posted by architect:
If you are looking for an excuse to buy:

• a hydraulic spreader
  
• a thickness planer, and
  
• a metal/nail detector,
  

and you have a lot of time on your hands, I'd say go for it. If you are more thinking crowbar/working with the raw wood, not in a million years.

This.

I know I saw a package of pallet wood at Lowes several months back. Already cleaned up and planed ready to go.

quote:

Apart from the effort to disassemble, is there any issue with using pallet wood for this purpose?

It doesn't matter where it comes from (unless it is something obvious).
What matters is it the correct wood for your project and what is necessary to process it for your use.
Sometimes the process can be cost more in time and prep than what it is worth to do.
You just need to evaluate.
Other than that I have no problem repurposing some pallets.

You're treating pallets as a refined and monolithic material. All the same. They're not. Lots of guys living west of here seem to make their living salvaging them or stealing them and then reselling. This is old data, but they used to sell for $6 each if solid and no broken boards. I'd see overloaded pickup trucks rattling down the road with them stacked way too high. Guess the cops got after them because they're loaded lower and strapped down these days.

Anyway, small wood and sawmills cut them and then sell them. Doesn't matter the species of wood, meaning any trash wood can be mixed in. Because multiple makers are involved, the quality of manufacture varies all over the map. At work (gawd I hate how that sounds) we had a maintenance guy who did woodworking on the side. He always had his eyes open for cherry boards and even an occasional walnut. He'd use or even make spare time back in the metal shop. If a pallet had a desirable board, he'd haul it off, replace the board with one he didn't like and no one was wiser. The fool warehouse manager just was told he was reconditioning them.

He kind of was. His big problem was the boards were often different sizes. The fly by night operators would just assemble them out of any size of junk wood they had on hand.

So back to the original idea. If you've got a planer you can make them all the same thickness, or not if you don't mind the variety.

And be careful they make lousy firewood. Often not dried and as stated earlier, full of metal. Particularly lousy for bonfire wood. They do burn but leave "tire worms" to pick up in mowers or anything inflatable. Not single season things, either. You can get a flat 10 years down the road. They also work wonders on kids bare feet.

The pallet wood look has been a huge trend for the last 5 years or so. It's not just a cheap material, it is the reclaimed look that people are after. The variance in thickness and color in the material is a feature, not a bug.

I'm on the side of leery, when the prior use of a pallet may not be clearly known. Way back in the day I would raid the trash at motorcycle dealers for crates/pallets fromm the Far East. The wood looked like Philippine Mahogany but was way a problem to cut and work. It did make good deer stand material.
The only other time i went with pallets was when a local specialty tubing mill was selling the palletts their stainless strip came in on. I presumed that for a premium material those pallets would be specifically made for the coils. That material was pretty clear oak that I ended up making parallel clamps from.
I second the idea of finding a local mill and looking for their culls and castoffs. I'm in East Texas and there are some good choices. I have seen on facebook one guy closer to DFW (NE Tx) that offers culls and remants from cutting slabs for $20 a load before he burns the pile. While you still have labor involved, you go straight into cutting and sizing, while avoiding the PITA of breaking down the pallets.