HOW TO TAKE APART A PALLET - the easy way

what's up guys my name is Jake I'm a relatively new content creator here on YouTube and I'm really passionate about building unconventional structures with free or reused material I also make a little music on the side now that Lumber's getting so expensive pallets are a relatively ubiquitous option that most people have access to for free and they give you two kinds of lumber thin boards like this and thicker 2x4s like that with this method you're going to be able to take apart a pallet in about 20 minutes save 90% of the lumber and reuse the nails if you want to and you're also going to have a pretty good time doing it how to take apart a pallet the easy way there are three ways that people usually take apart pallets the first is with a hammer and a crowbar they try to hammer into these slots and pry these boards up the problem with that is these nails can be really hard to get out and you'll end up splitting a lot of lumber which just wastes a lot of material takes forever and it's kind of a pain in the ass second way people do it is they'll take a circular saw like this and they'll run it across the boards to free them up and then use something like a hammer to bust off the middle brace while this can feel kind of fast at first it actually becomes a pretty messy and clunky process not only do you lose some of the length of your Lumber when you rip it off but you also end up with all these nubbin still attached to the brace which makes it kind of hard to reuse it's also Harder Than You Think to get this middle brace off when you use that method the third method is people will take a sawall with a metal cutting blade and they'll try to rip through the nails like this while that kind of works it's still kind of a pain because you have to pry the boards up before you can really get access and then you end up with all these short sharp nail nubbin that you just have to pound out anyway it also doesn't allow you to reuse the nails which if you're just doing a lowkey project it's really nice to have a bunch of nails on hand so let me show you what I do instead right here I've got all the tools that I use to do this job there's a couple special things in here that you're not going to find at every hardware store and we're going to talk about those as we go through the process so the first part of this process is we need to get these boards separated from the braces for this we're going to use one tool this guy right here it's called a pallet Buster this is the secret sauce for taking apart pallettes I found this for 25 bucks on Facebook Marketplace but you can also get it for 65 on Amazon there's Link in my description with all the tools that I use in this video if you buy one through those links I get a little bit of money which helps me continue making these videos for you guys there's a lot of different versions of these on Amazon but this is the best one I found it's really sturdy and heavy which gives you a lot of Leverage it also has these articulating heads which makes it really easy to insert into the slots this thing's really simple to use set it inside of the slot like that stand on the other side of the pallet so that it doesn't pop up while you're pushing and pull back just like that your board's going to pop right up another useful trick is once you've gotten two parts off just stand on the board and that helps you get a little more leverage on the other side we've got our first board once you got your first one off it becomes pretty easy to get a flow going and work down the whole [Music] pallet you're going to want to watch where you step while you're doing this sometimes when you pull the boards off there'll be a nail sticking up like this stepping on that doesn't feel very good the last board can be a little tricky because you've lost a lot of your weight I find it's easiest to start with the side pieces and then do the middle one last here we go so now we've got two kinds of lumber we've got our thin boards with a lot of nails popping up like that and we've got our thicker boards with Nails in them like this let's start with the thin ones for these thin boards you can just grab a hammer and tap the nails out like that while most of the time this works just fine and you can totally do it if you want to it is a little bit more timec consuming and it's not as foolproof as you might think sometimes you're going to run into a board like this where the nails are bent and these can be really tricky sometimes you have to end up prying them up and it just ends up being really timec consuming I'm building a pallet cabin this summer and I'm taking apart a ton of pallets so I want it to go as as quickly and easily as possible that's where this tool comes in this is called an air puncher from Air Locker again there's a link in my description if you want more information on it it plugs into an air compressor like this and it allows you to punch the nails right out when you buy a tool like this it's going to come with a little bottle of lubricant that looks something like this it's really important that you use this because otherwise the nails will sometimes get locked inside there and it is a pain in the butt to get them out all you do is take a couple drops put it in the end good to go you're going to take the nose part here and you're going to insert it right over the top of the nail and then you just pull the trigger a lot of times this tool is going to work so well it's going to knock the nails right out of the board so for that it's good to have this bucket you can put it underneath and it'll catch your nails the other thing you're going to want to do put an Old Rag like this in the bottom cuz sometimes those Nails come out really fast and they have a tendency to bounce back on you for this part of the job it's good to throw on a pair of gloves and some safety glasses just to you know protect yourself plus then you get to look cool as the last part of our process is we're going to want to deal with these thicker boards that still have a lot of nails protruding from them there's really two things you can do about these nails sometimes I'll just grab my hammer and I'll hammer them right in that way they're flush with the surface they're not going to poke you when you're using it just makes it easier to handle sometimes I'll just bend them over and Hammer them down but if you want to reuse the nails heels are really easy way to do that you're going to want to take your crowbar or your cat's claw and you're going to put it on your table like this you want the head to be facing laterally not vertically you're then going to take a piece of scrap wood or a bench vice whatever you have to attach it to the table and you're going to screw this thing down so that it won't move once you've got it locked in place you're going to grab your board stick your nail in there and it's going to give you a bunch more leverage to get those Nails out sometimes it helps if you give it a little tap first and the nail should come right out problem with a lot of these pilot Nails is they can be pretty Rusty and poor quality so sometimes you're going to put it in there try to pull it out and the nail head's going to pop off like that in that case I just pound them in and forget about it and with that you're pretty much done make yourself a nice little stack and decide what you want to build if you made it this far in the video thank you for watching I hope it was informative for you if you have any questions drop them in the comments and if you want to see anything else let me know otherwise if you want to see what I'm going to build out of all this wood subscribe and I'll see you there thanks for watching ch

Channel: Jacob Cochrane

Views: 24,119

Keywords: how to take apart a pallet, pallet, free lumber, free wood, pallet project, easy way to take apart pallets, pallet wood, reused lumber, reclaimed lumber, cheap diy, easy diy, pallet buster, nail puncher, diy, building with pallets, pallet cabin, pallet deck, pallet cabin build, pallet construction, building, construction, woodworking, reclaimed wood, pallet business

Id: SLP-BQOjgyg

Length: 6min 33sec (393 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 18 2024