Turning a Free Pallet into a $1,200 Desk

so I'm on my way to pick up a free palette that I found on Facebook Marketplace it looked pretty nice in the photos but you never know these things fingers crossed it's a good one [Music] [Music] [Music] hello good how are you yeah I just out of curiosity did you what did it come with okay thank you thanks a lot oh it just rip the interior of my car [Music] foreign so picking up that palette took 40 minutes I'm keeping track of all of the time I spent on this project so at the end when I sell it I can figure out how much I made per hour but first things first we got to take this thing apart since a lot of these ends are already split I think I'm just going to run my circular saw along the ends and then I have to take all of these nails out the middle let's do it [Music] all right one down [Music] yeah oh my god there were so many nails in there there's actually still some more nails to take out but I had to stop early because I have to go move my car so I got good news and bad news the bad news is that about half of these boards are a really junky soft wood a lot of them cracked the nails pulled right through but the good news is that the other half of these boards are a very dense hardwood including these two big beams this one still has some Nails in it but as I mentioned I have to go to my car in about three minutes it's funny the difference between hardwood and softwood is so obvious when they're in the same palette the nails were pulling right through these ones the boys were cracking super easily but these guys did not Dent it was really hard pulling the nails out and I still have a bunch more to pull out but I think it's going to be worth it anyways for now gotta go move my car and tomorrow I'm gonna figure out what I'm gonna make out of this stuff all right it's a new day got a good night's sleep a filling breakfast let's get the rest of these nails out [Music] so after another 40 minutes of work I got all of the nails out except for one the head snapped off I tried to hammer it all the way through and it just wasn't coming through the other side it's annoying but I think I have a plan hopefully it will work but for now I'm gonna plane a little bit off the face of these boards so we can see the beautiful wood that lies underneath let's go see so I'm gonna start with a super shallow pass to remove a tiny bit of wood so we can reveal what the wood is underneath all this Grime let's see [Music] foreign [Music] oh my gosh check out the Grain on this this wood is beautiful so here is the total wood Hall from the palette we got four wide boards four slats and two of these big beams you can see back there in the trash all of the pine boards that I threw out and from that first planting this wood looks really nice like check out this grain it's so pretty so if I stack all of these pieces together it makes 10 inches of height the shortest pieces are 42 inches long and at this point I'm thinking of doing similar to my last palette project that is ripping these pieces in half to get some extra width and then gluing them together into a beautiful slab now the exciting thing about this palette is that we have these extra wide pieces these ones are five and three quarter inches wide and everything else is three and three quarter inch wide so three and three quarter divided by two 1.875 minus 0.125 for the curve that gives us one and three quarter inch of thickness if we rip these in half now for the wide ones if we rip those pieces into thirds one and two third inch so at the end of the day I feel like we can end up with an inch and a half thick tabletop inch and a half is nothing to sneeze at let's start ripping these down foreign [Music] so now it is time to rip these big boys in half and like you already know there's at least one nail still in these so here's the game plan I switched out my nice finish blade for the construction grade blade that came with this saw and I'm going to just cut right through the nail this might sound like a bad idea it's definitely going to dull the blade but I'm confident that the blade should be able to cut right through it so I'm starting with a board that doesn't have a nail in it at least I don't think it does just for practice and then we'll move on to the other one which has the nails still inside [Music] now I'll flip this over and go through the other side [Music] all right time for the one with the nail [Music] all right I don't know if you saw it but there was definitely a little spark there and there is our nail so the saw got through it no problem and what our stock table saw blades for if not cutting through nails all right that looks awesome this this wood is so beautiful like look at this grain this is unreal now that we have one flat Edge on all these boards I'm going to rip them all to the same width and put a flat Edge on the other side so there are all of our boards respond to the same width this wood is so beautiful I'm so excited to put finish on we're almost ready to glue this into a slab but first these dirty faces won't make for a very good glue joint so I want to run all the boards through the planer this way just take a tiny bit off again to get a nice clean flat face for gluing let's do it I mean all right it's a new day and a lot has happened let me bring you up to speed so last night I was thinking about the last palette table that I made I built that entire table start to finish before finding a buyer luckily I did find a buyer I sold the table to Michaela and her husband for 550 but I was thinking what if I just make a post on Instagram that I'm working on another table and if anyone is interested in buying it in advance to just send me a message that way they can customize it they can get the table that they want rather than me designing something on spec and it worked Mackenzie reached out to me she was super interested in getting this table made into a desk we traded some ideas back and forth and locked it in this table will be a desk for Mackenzie she's in Toronto it's absolutely perfect she wants exactly the look that this palette wood provides I'm so excited I cannot believe how well this worked out so I think we're ready to glue this baby up let's get to it so I spent some time arranging all the pieces I think that this layout is going to look super good and I'm going to split the glue up in half so that I can fit the two halves through my planer so I'll glue these ones up first then these ones and then glue them together [Music] thank you [Music] beautiful [Music] so I was kind of hoping to leave these nails embedded in the wood but I really don't want to send these through my planers I think they would damage the blades so I think we got to hammer these through foreign so that big hole is from when we originally tried to hammer that nail through with a nail set that was when this was still in one piece and now that nail is somewhere in the middle but it should be well out of the range of the planer so we should be okay leaving that in there and then just the tip of this is now sticking through definitely progress let me show you what this looks like now that's a fair amount of protrusion I think we might be able to get that out with pliers foreign just snapped off the tip so yeah we'll just hammer it back inside and it'll be embedded in there out of range of the planer blades there we go out of sight out of mind it's playing these bad boys [Music] by the way I don't run these at the same time because I'm pretty sure I would blow the circuit breaker and I don't have access to it in my apartment so I'd have to call my neighbor and ask them to reset it [Music] oh the Grain on this is so cool I think we're ready to glue these two halves together [Music] so I want to fill some of these knot holes with clear epoxy but first I have to fix a mistake there is what looks to be a big gap between these two boards what it actually is is one of these boards is actually tapered towards the top I should have caught this before the glue up and flipped it over and glued the other flat side but this board was probably on the edge of the pallet it had a really worn Edge and so when you look from the top it looks like a big ugly gap and if we were to fill this knot hole with epoxy right now all of that epoxy would flow into that crack which we don't really need to do so before doing the epoxy I'm just going to fill that crack with sawdust and wood glue but before we do that I need some Sawdust time to sand [Music] so there's the knot hole that I want to fill with epoxy so just on either side I'm Gonna Fill the crack with this glue and sawdust mixture I'm realizing now that some of the epoxy might flow under this as well but hopefully this will at least reduce the amount of epoxy we have to use to top up this crack [Music] so the glue and sawdust started doing this as I was sanding it which tells me that it's not fully dry so I'm going to stop sanding for now and switch gears to filling the knot holes with epoxy then we can just sand everything after that's all cured so I'm filling the knot holes with alumalite amazing clear cast epoxy resin you just mix up equal parts of the A and B so I'm only adding a small amount of epoxy to start just to seal the knot hole so that it doesn't all bleed Right Through the Wood then once this cures I'll come back with a second coat and fill it up all the way just need a little bit so the epoxy has been curing for about a day and what I was afraid might happen happened so pretty much all of the epoxy and the knot hole next to the crack ended up flowing into the crack itself we coated the inside of the knot hole which is good but if we pour any more epoxy in there it's just going to continue flowing into the crack so instead of adding more and more epoxy and just waiting to fill up the crack I'm going to seal the bottom of this knot hole with CA glue so we can be sure that this next coat of epoxy will be the final one foreign force is set all right hopefully I won't see the level of epoxy go down in this knot hole at all the bottom should be fully sealed now these big knot holes are going to look so cool with clear epoxy in them all right the epoxy is stable get the bubbles out 24 hours later the epoxy is all cured time to sand so I got this baby sanded up to 80 grit and now I want to trim the ends at 90 degrees I laid down some masking tape to prevent chip out let's do this good thing this wood is really harder that would have dented [Music] beautiful we're almost ready to put on the finishing touches but first more sanding [Music] oh yeah that should be plenty of sawdust to fill the rest of the cracks and the nail holes on the table top you already know what I'm gonna say more sanding so I got this sanded up to 220 grit it's looking amazing and now I want to Bevel the edges Mackenzie and I both really want to preserve this December 2019 embossing on the front face it's from the original palette it just looks really cool but as you can see it goes right up to the top Edge so if I do too heavy of a bevel on the top I'm going to hide some of that embossing however I do have a lot more room on the bottom so I think I'm going to do a dramatic chamfer on the bottom Edge and then a more subtle chamfer on the top let's do it [Music] oh that looks clean I love it [Music] beautiful there we go knocks off the sharp corner but still reveals the 12 2019. we're now ready for one of my favorite parts of every woodworking project raising the grain all this really is is wetting the woods so that you can sand off the fuzzies but for the first time it reveals the natural beauty of the wood let's do this [Music] [Applause] that's awesome oh shoot I just poured a bunch of water in my foot good thing there weren't any Electronics down there I cleaned off all the dust with a rag soaked and mineral spirits and we are finally ready for finish I'm gonna be finishing this with total boat Halcyon clear this is a rugged clear varnish full disclosure this was sent to me by Toto boat but I'll be including the full retail price in the final cost breakdown at the end of this video I'm super excited to see how this stuff looks so let's get to it so I actually moved the table top inside to avoid any dust floating around the garage getting caught in the wet finish so I have the Halcyon finish in gloss in satin I ultimately want a satin finish but total boat recommends doing the first few coats in gloss and then finishing up with a satin let's do it [Music] foreign so I ended up doing three coats of the gloss giving it a light sanding with 220 grit and then finishing up with two coats of the satin and this thing looks incredible I'm so happy I went with the satin finish I feel like gloss wood table tops can look a little tacky and the satin finish just looks so classy this thing is super smooth very happy with the Halcyon finish again there will be a link in the description for that and we're now ready for the final step of this build putting on the legs you might have noticed these guys behind me for about half of the video Mackenzie and I decided on these gold metal legs to match the decor of her home I got them for about 120 on Amazon and I think they're gonna look so awesome with this tabletop let's put them on foreign [Music] August 13 2022 we're on our way to drop off the table or the desk to McKenzie there it is Carlos never fails oh that's Mackenzie definitely good to see you yeah it just barely fits necessary here we go yeah so here's the embossing in the front thank you one big change from the first was that I used a new finish it's like a it's a marine varnish the other one was a polyurethane which is nice but I think this one is like legitimately a nicer finish I think this wood is also harder than the last wood like getting the you'll see in the video getting the nails out was like it took me like three times as long as the last one there you go oh laughs whoops all right this one right here wow that is an amazing view I don't know where you want it but I'll just put it I'm not sure that's awesome that's an embarrassing amount of plants nice so I have something I need to tell you I I fully assumed from your name that you were female I figured a lot of people do technically technically 52 of McKenzie's are female now which is she were losing the battle oh no so in the video I do say she multiple times I'm sorry that's fine all right should we see if there's any super glue I don't want to leave you a broken yeah did you get the shot of me breaking it I think so no no no no that's the point we're good so if it uh comes off just let me know and I'll 3D print you a new one and I'll just put it back on because it's just it's an easy plastic piece I'm gonna try to finish the video up today yeah we'll get out of your hair thank you so much again all good so it took 40 minutes to deliver the desk to McKenzie bringing the total time spent on this build to an even 12 hours now for our material costs the legs cost 135.59 after task we used 22.60 worth of the Halcyon finish I weighed the pouches before and after using them about nine dollars worth of glue three dollars worth of epoxy bringing the total material cost of this product to 170 dollars and 23 cents when Mackenzie locked down the project we agreed on a purchase price of a thousand dollars I just checked my phone and he ended up transferring me twelve hundred dollars I texted him this was not a mistake he liked the table so much that he decided to pay 200 extra he is such a kind and generous person thank you so much Mackenzie I appreciate it so much so taking all of that into account we ended up making 85.81 on this project which I am very happy with as I mentioned there will be links to everything I used in this project in the description and before I go I would like to give a big thank you to my top supporter on patreon my mom Kathy Kurt and if you would like to learn more about my patreon page and gain exclusive access to my behind the scenes Instagram page head on over to patreon.com morleycurt thank you so much for watching and I will see you in the next video

Channel: Morley Kert

Views: 6,187,154

Keywords: make, maker, making, do it yourself, design, fusion, morely, kurt, morly, morelykert, morleykert, reclaimed, pallet, furniture, coffee, table, money, profit, sell, sold, selling, facebook, marketplace, how, to, toronto, epoxy, resin, legs, beginner, amateur, fun, hardwood, expensive, garbage, trash, streets, curb, find, found, dollars, profitable, saw, garage, planer, vevor, reuse, reused, digital fabrication, desk, totalboat, halcyon

Id: B5qSh3dQIl0

Length: 23min 34sec (1414 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 14 2022