Rough wood, smooth wood

 "Do every act of life as if it were your last." - Marcus Aurelius

I have access to a nearly unlimited supply of pallet wood, thanks to work.  Every few days at work there is another pallet to get rid of, and since the pallets end up being disposed of, nobody has a problem if the employees recover some of that wood for their own use. 

 

A while back, I took several pallets home and dis-assembled them.  It was quite a project, taking nearly a full day.  The pallets are held together by twist nails, which are a nightmare to pry out.  The process of pulling the twist nails out of hardwood often either dents the slats or splits them.   At the end of the day I was sore as hell, but I had a decent-sized pile of rough-cut hardwood.

With the new stack of wood in hand, I tried a couple of minor wood-working projects.  The first was a cute Bootlegger whiskey crate.  It was pretty fun and easy to build.  I intended to burn in some kind of lettering and logo, but never got that far.

 Something like the picture below would be cool

Right now the crate it's full of bits and pieces for another project - making Post Office Box banks - someday I'll get to that.

After I finished the simple crate project, the wife wanted my help in hand-making a gift for a relative.  This gift involved her wood-burning after I finished cutting out a pattern that we made.  This is when we discovered that it's next to impossible to wood-burn on rough-cut wood.  I ended up using my hand-sander to get the grain knocked down to the point where she could wood-burn it.

First I used the table saw to trim the sides off each slat.  When that was done, the sides were flat and smooth enough to be glued together.   I have a little biscuit joiner to install the ovals that align the pieces and strengthen the glue joint.

Below: Joined, glued and clamped.

Below:  The design that the wife wanted, traced onto the rough wood panel.

Below:  The pattern has been cut out and sanded, sanded, sanded until it was finally smooth enough for wood-burning.

Next it was the turn of the artist - not me.

Below: The finished product.  It was about 1ft x 2ft.  Pretty cool, really.

The wife wants to do a lot more wood-burning projects, but there is no freaking way that I'm hand-sanding that entire stack of hardwood.  Thus I was able to convince her that I really really needed a jointer.  These cut a thin layer of wood off the surface, making the wood smooth and square, while also taking out any bowing.  Eventually I found an inexpensive jointer on Craigslist, and it came with a base that has castors.

Below:  Handy explanation of how a jointer works, with a word of caution at the end about keeping your grubby hands clear of the spinning bit.

There is another thing to consider when using pallet wood, and that is the possibility you missed or broke off one of the nails.  I had to get a metal detector wand.  This one squeals if it locates a nail, and it's extremely sensitive.  Between the jointer and the metal detector, the free wood has cost more than I anticipated.  On the other hand, if civilization collapses, I will be able to make finished wood products for fun and profit!

If civilization fails to collapse, I hope to be putting up a few more images showcasing the wife's wood-burning skills.