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Need help indentifying pallet wood I have

6K views 60 replies 25 participants last post by  AlaskaGuy 
#1 · (Edited by Moderator)
So I work for a printing company and we have a massive supply of pallets I'm new to wood working and am planning to build my boys a book shelf for there room I have been taking the hardwood pallets that are heat treated and pulling the nails and hand planing them down somewhat flat for a nice finished look.

I'm not sure what type of wood some of this is, I can tell when I have oak for sure cause it's got that unquie grain pattern I actually think I have white and red oak but maybe some maple ? And one runner on this one pallet is reddish in color but soft and easy to plane so I was thinking maybe cherry?

I'll take some pictures tonight.

I'm in the market for a 6" jointer for these pallets as we have a 14" great neck plane and just bought a older bailey Stanley no.4 and it takes awhile to do one board as I'm trying to speed up the process.

I've built one project so far a pine dual step step stool with half blind dovetails
 
#6 ·
Yeah I'll take some pictures of what I have when I get home from work. I would like to make a small junk basket style thing with some of the oak and use my porter cable dovetail jig to do some through dovetails. Like I said I'm new to wood working it all started when I got a free old craftsman 1hp router and picked up a cheap craftsman 12" dovetail jig. Then came the desalt dwe7491rs table saw, upgraded Freud blade and bunch of other wood working tools. I really can't justify spending the money on nice lumber till I really get it dialed in, as it's not like welding we're I can chop it off and grind it out.
 
#8 ·
It s been mentioned here many times. Pallet wood is not always good for us to use not only is it low grade wood it often dirty and sometimes treated with insecticides. Why make your hobby harder and risk poisening yourself with foul dust.
There s still no free lunch :(

- Aj2
AJ is correct on this. However, there are ways to determine pallet wood origins and if they've been treated chemically. Here is one example:

How To Tell If A Wood Pallet Is Safe For Reuse?
 
#9 · (Edited by Moderator)
I have trouble thinking the palettes are Alder, which is relatively soft, not particularly strong, and not particularly red in color, most milled in the Pacific Northwest….we have lots of it in Oregon. One clue could be where the palettes are being shipped from because they are usually made from the least expensive local wood. So if it Asia they are probably a low grade asian hard wood (I use to get Japanese motorcycle shipping crates that were low grade mahogany).
Pictures will help, show both flat grain and end grain.

Finally I find it is not the expense of the wood I use but my "precious" time in building the project that I value the most. Inexpensive wood does not make a good project better.
 
#11 ·
In spite of the impracticality of using pallet wood for anything serious, it is just intriguing to me to take something that is worthless and make something desirable with it. It is like the appeal of panning for gold on our farm. If you work hard at it all day, you can find a substantial number of flecks - maybe $5 worth. It isn't the absolute value that is appealing. It is the challenge. At least that is what appeals to me.
 
#21 ·
#22 ·
Picture 1: Oak
2: Not sure, image is out of focus. Could perhaps be ash
3: Oak
4: Could be anything, out of focus
5: Oak
6: Oak
Others might have wiser words to say regarding species. It seems you have got some fairly ok quality timber there.

When photographing wood for identification make sure to do:
- One image of the whole board
- A close up of grain
- A close up of end gran
This makes helping a lot easyer

Good luck!
 
#24 ·
Danny looks to be the most accurate.

My problems with pallets is that any pallet made out of the US must be treated with insecticide to make sure we don't import bugs from overseas.
I know these are from your ink supplier in New York, but were the pallets cut and built in New York? Something to think about. Sometimes they use pallets from an overseas supplier of a component they use in the final product.

Personally, I just don't use them at all - too messy and risky.

To me, this falls under the same category as making lamps and selling them without final UL approval. You can get away with it, but if anything happens, you are the source and therefore liable.
 
#25 ·
I thought I had listed I work in NY and our ink vendor is located out of NC there all stamped US and Heat treated. I've only seen a couple pallets that haven't been heat treated and they come in with material to print labels from small vendors. We get in a average of 50 pallets a day for material off the trucks and Fasson who makes the material always uses US pallets that are Heat treated.

I deff can tell the oak pallets and the one I was thinking was hickory as well and I was almost positive that one is cherry. Most of the runners have a notch cut into them so I'm jointing the one edge flat and tossing them on the table saw to rip off the notch in them to be left with something like a 2×4. Which I will use to build the structure of the book case. I decided to take a couple oak runners with the notch to use as th feet of the shelf to give it a better look. I'll keep you guys posted once I get everything hand planed and sanded then I'll start cutting and putting it together.

I would have liked to use my Freud dado blade set to make the shelf's but this wood isn't all the same size.

I will get to use the dado blade set on this jewelry box I'm half way done with. Made it out of pine and did half blind dovetails on all 4 corners then cut a dado slot for the bottom of the box and used some what I think is birch veneered plywood from dresser drawers I had taken apart and saved. I just need to come up with a design for the top to the box I have some crown molding i ripped down and was thinking off tossing it on the miter saw t
 
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