Pallet projects and crafting using wood recovered from wood pallets is really popular. And, for good reason! Materials that might otherwise be wasted or not put to good use is now being recovered and some pretty cool things are being made!
If you are going to disassemble more than a few pallets, you’re gonna need the right tools and approach to do the job efficiently and to recover as much material as possible. Sure, you can pound a pallet apart - but it’s a lot of hard work, not very much fun, and you may end up with much of the wood being a pile of splinters!
Introducing Bucky’s Pallet Buster! We told our son what we needed, showed him a few samples online of what other people had created to disassemble pallets and got back a great tool. Bucky created the tool from several pieces of scraps he had on hand at the manufacturing plant he worked at. You can use similar materials, or buy new to make your own. What matters is the general form of the tool makes it very strong, and able to exert a high amount of leverage while distributing the up-pressure over enough wood that the nails are lifted out intact, and the wood doesn’t splinter.
To make the tool lighter and to give you options when you need to fit into a tighter space, this model has a removable wood handle and keeper pin. This gives you an extended handle, with a little more leverage when it’s needed, and allows you to grasp the tool without having to bend over to pick it up.
What? No welder or welding skills? You’re not entirely out of luck! You can buy these online complete, or you can approach a local welding/fabrication shop, or contact the local High School or Tech College location to see if there is a student there that would be willing to make one up for you.
If you’d like a sketch of the basic construction and dimensions of the tool, visit http://bit.ly/2KXfHIePalletBuster. Notice we’ve given an alternative approach in a couple of places.
If you have a design that you really like and has really worked for you, won’t you share it by commenting below?
Thanks for watching and being a part of our viewer family!
Hi, I'm Dirt Farmer Jay. You know, if you do any kind of pallet deconstruction for the very popular
pallet arts right now, you got to have the right tools. And if you don't have them, you're going
to waste a lot of time and damage the wood. Well, I'm going to show you a great tool that our son
made for us and show you how it works. Bucky's Pallet Buster. Stay tuned. Well, using reclaimed
wood from pallets is all the rage right now, and there's some really cool projects you can make.
Everything from American flags to planters to furniture pieces and all sorts of things are
just downright fun. And it feels really good when you take something that was either destined for
the burn pile or the landfill and you upcycle it and make it into a really cool product.
Now, to do that, though, you got to take apart these types of pallets. And this particular
pallet is a heavy duty one. It's typically used for concrete products. And so it's got more wood
in it than you're used to seeing, perhaps. However, we chose this style because in another
episode, I'm going to make a planter where we'll have herbs and some succulents and ornamentals
in this roll around. But we're going to start the deconstruction in this episode and show you this
tool that our son, affectionately known as Bucky, made for us. To get a pallet deconstructed,
you've got to pull off the slats. If you have a tool that is somewhat like this,
and you can see by some of the still shots that I'm providing as well,
a little bit more of close up. But essentially what you need is two lifters, a fulcrum point,
a handle here. And in this case, because this is very heavy, to reduce the weight,
we used a shorter handle tube with a keeper pin and then a wood handle extension. And in this case,
we're going to take out every other slat because that's going to become a bin for a plant. That's
going to become a bin and so forth. So you end up with four bays or four rows levels of three bays.
So 12 different potting spaces, ultimately, when you see this later on. But right now we need to
remove three slats on each one of these. So the way I start is not in the middle,
but out on the edge, stand on your pallet, rock it, and then just till you hear it start to pop.
Notice that I didn't fracture or break any of the wood. It lifted because you were distributing the
weight across. And then notice what happens here. Now this is where you need to retain leverage.
Push down with your foot and then go like that. And there you go. Now you have a piece of wood.
Now this is very dangerous. If you've got little ones around, you want to make sure this never
ends up laying face up like that. That is an invitation to disaster. So using a garden card
or a wheelbarrow or something, lay these sideways facing down like that. Notice that I'm reversing.
Instead of going this way, I'm going to go this way. Okay and there you have it. You can see how
fast we move slats in a short period of time and with a minimum of damage. Now sometimes there's
going to be something that splits. It's inevitable that there's going to be a little bit of damage,
but it's a lot less than using short crowbars or a chisel or that sort of thing. And you'll have
to do some cleanup of some of the nails. There are lots of different ways you can construct this
particular tool. But for your convenience, I have included a set of plans and you can visit the
description below and download that. Now there's a lot of different details or different customization
you can do personally for your own pilot buster. But the basic idea is you need some really sturdy
lifter tabs that are going to go under each of the individual slats. You need a good fulcrum point to
rock across the main cross members of the pilot. And you need a way to attach or at least a full
handle or some way to fix it like we've done in this one. You'll find the plans below just a good
starter for the idea. And if you found this to be helpful to you or you have a tool like this that
you've developed that you would like to share with the rest of our viewers, why don't you comment in
the comments below and share it with the rest of us. And if you did find this video and this tool
and plan to be helpful to you, won't you like the video? And better yet, won't you please subscribe
because that'll help us to continue to make great videos about the home, the shop, the kitchen,
and product reviews. Hey, thanks for watching. Until the next time, this is Dirt Farmer Jim.
