Introduction: Downcycled Pallet
To make your own bespoke pallet first you must collect wooden items and harvest the timber. Discarded furniture is easy to find on the streets, antiques and old musical instruments are an exelent scource of well seasoned straght grained timber. try to find the best timber you can and collect more than you need you can always use the excess for fire wood. When you are scavenging keep an eye out for discarded money or jewellery, it can often be found inside furniture in drawers or down the back of sofas. spend this money on drink and drugs it will make pallet construction less tedious.
Supplies
A pile of timber, Nails: 3x40, 3x70, Drill, Drill bit 2.5mm, Hand saw, Claw hammer, Tape mesure, Pencil
Step 1: Demolition
Smash up found items and take the bits you want.
Step 2: Selection
Remove nails screws excrement chewing gum and the like. Before cutting the materials up to make planks and blocks
you need:
9 no. 100x100x100 Blocks
7 no. 1200x100x22 Planks
3 no. 800x100x22 Planks
These dimensions are for a standard euro pallet but feel free to adjust them to suit your or your distributors needs. in my case i shortend some plank lenghts to 1180mm in order to comply with Ryanair bagage restrictions.
Step 3: Blocks
If you cant find timber big enough you can build composite blocks. perhaps try lamination, , parallel colums or torsion box construction,
Step 4: Skids
Now nail your blocks to the skids. i drilled pilot holes to reduce spliting in the timber as i was using thin section hard wood in some places.
Step 5: Squaring Up
lay out the skids on a flat surface and nail on cross planks, use just one nail at each point . make sure all planks are parallel and equispaced.
Next nail on outside top planks select the best planks for this job as thease planks will be subjected to wear and abuse when your pallet is in use. Before driving extra nails measure the diagnals to insure the pallet is square. off square pallets are annoying an dont pack well in load bays. Now drive plenty of nails at each corner use nails at least 70mm long.
Step 6: Planking
Nail on center stringer run it through the center line, now place the last to top planks so the spacing is pleasing to the eye once you are happy nail all the planks home.
Step 7: Finishing
Turn pallet over and inspect your work bend the pionts of any protruding nails before clinching them home, sand of any sharp edges.
Step 8: Enjoy Your Pallet or Send It Out in to the Big World That Is Paletized Distribution
Now you have your own pallet use it for sorage, moving heavy items and shipping your favorite stuff overseas. if you have made it well it will give years of use and bring pleasure to every one who uses it every where.