Turning a Free Pallet into a $550 Table

just found this pallet on the side of the road it looks like it's really nice wood let's take it and see like a glove look at that perfect fit this is definitely one of the nicest pallets i've seen in the wild so my goal is to turn this free palette into as high value of an item as i can and then sell it for as much money as possible while still maintaining a good profit margin so if i turn into something that i can sell for five hundred dollars but i have to spend 450 in materials that's not really a success in my book but first things first let's take this thing apart all right one down all right two down getting faster [Applause] [Music] [Music] all right guess we're finishing this on the floor danger of working on saw [Music] horses lovely so disassembling that palette took 30 minutes keeping track of all the time i spent on this project so i can do a final accounting at the end i'm still not sure of the wood species but i think we'll be able to figure that out as we start to clean these up next step a lot of these boards have a lot of dirt on them like this one and i want to clean that off this is just a wire brush and i'm wearing a dust mask in case this is dangerous dirt these are looking so cool i don't want to speak too soon but some of it looks kind of like cedar all right i'm really excited to see what this wood looks like so i'm going to start sending boards through my planer [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay i'm very excited because i'm almost certain that this is in fact cedar i wasn't sure at first i thought it might be fur but i left the garage and came back and it definitely smells like cedar in here okay so we got this beautiful reclaimed cedar what's the game plan i really need to play to my strengths here i don't think i'm the best person to make table legs so what i'm thinking of doing is taking all of this pallet wood gluing it up into one single beautiful slab and then buying some legs to highlight that tabletop i think i can get pretty nice table legs for like 50 bucks so if we succeed with our original idea of selling this for a few hundred dollars that's still a very healthy profit margin yeah i think that's the way to go let's start cutting i don't have a jointer so i'm just going to use my table saw to get one flat edge hopefully will be good enough then i can flip it around and get a second flat edge let's do this [Music] so now we have this nice flat edge but if we line all of our boards up it's not very wide this would only make a table 12 and a half inches wide so what i want to do is rip all of them in half widthwise and then double this width that's going to give us a coffee table 25 inches wide by 39 inches long you know barring any extra that we cut off to get a nice clean edge [Music] finally we got these two big boys to cut in half these are so pretty it almost looks like oak anyways i'm a little nervous about this cut and i'm gonna do it in two passes one at half height and then raise the blade all the way hopefully my job site table saw can handle this we'll find out very shortly [Music] [Music] oh my god this is so pretty i want to use these for the ends this is so nice this one we might have to get rid of because it has the split in it all these little book matched green details are so cool check that out i think we're ready to glue so i'm going to glue this in two sections split it right at this book match in the middle big glue up to do and the glue starts to set before you know it two three never done a glue up this big before four five six seven eight last one perfect i also have to push this guy down there we go nice that works really well some of these guys just to pull it add a little more pressure not going to get a ton with these quick clamps but it won't hurt i really need more long f clamps i thought three would be enough i don't know why i thought that but i think we'll get a good joint i don't see any gaps all right i'm happy with this it's pretty flat we'll be able to plane out any inconsistencies got some good squeeze out wipe off some of that squeeze out before it dries all right it's been about an hour so the glue should be dry oh beautiful wow this thing is this thing is not light this is going to be a nice coffee table all right let's get it [Music] got some good squeeze out on that one now that we got both halves glued up we're ready to plane them down flat i am very excited for this step little nervous this is definitely the biggest piece of wood i've ever planned but we're taking a very shallow pass to start so i think it should be okay [Music] oh wow okay that was a bit more aggressive of a pass than i planned on but uh that looks really good that is super smooth all right let's play the other one i'm gonna be a little more conservative on the next pass [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] i didn't know if it was going to make it on that one but we did it all right i think that's good for planing they're the same thickness they're flat i can finish it up with a random orbit center so let's glue these babies together so i just set these up for a dry fit and i'm happy that i did because i found out that the mating face between these is not flat you can see it from this angle when i push them together it's tight together in the middle but then there's a gap on either end now if i had a jointer this would be an easy fix i could just run the mating faces over the jointer get a perfect flat face and i'd be good to go i don't have a jointer but i do have a table saw and the opposite edges are flat so what i'm going to do is take a super shallow pass on the table saw along the mating edges i'm going to do the same on both sides so i maintain the nice book matching and hopefully that will give me two flat edges that i can glue together let's find out [Music] all right let's see if that worked it's not perfect but it's better it's manageable let's glue this baby up oh yeah getting squeezed out on both sides which is what you love to see have to little by little tighten these and close that gap having some more f clamps or pipe clamps would be definitely useful here but clamps are expensive and this is what i have all right i think that is good oh beautiful look at that whew that is bulky all right time to sand all right after about 45 minutes got this baby sanded up to 220 grit it's super smooth now it's time to trim the ends all right let's hope this works is the circular saw powerful enough all right maybe it's the battery so i cordless circular saw i was having a lot of trouble on that cut and i think it's because of these little old 1.3 amp hour batteries so i bought some bigger ones these are 4 amp hours high performance ryobi batteries let's see how they do [Music] [Applause] oh my god it's like night and day that was so much better i've had these batteries for probably three or four years i've had these little batteries that came with my drill driver set i cannot believe it took until now for me to get a new battery we have a couple of small voids here and here and i'm just going to fill those with this alumalite amazing clearcast epoxy resin so you just mix it one to one it's a bit tough to get this to flow into the crack but luckily this stuff has a 30 minute working time so there's not really any rush that was bold there's a couple other small cracks that i'm just filling up with resin might as well make this thing as nice as i can i'm not really looking forward to the sanding that i'm gonna have to do of this but it'll be worth it grab my blow torch get these bubbles out after two days the epoxy is fully cured so time for another round of sanding i also sealed some cracks on the end of the table with epoxy so we gotta sand that off as well [Music] oh my god safety glasses are hiding in there now comes the part of the project that i have been the most excited for the whole time i've been working on this i think it's really going to take this table to the next level i'm going to use a chamfer bit in my router to add a bevel along the top and bottom edges i think this is going to look so cool i'm a little nervous though so i'm going to start on the bottom i don't know why i put on safety glasses just to flip this but it is heavy steady hands [Music] yes ah that looks so good because there's a little bit of unevenness in the bottom it also evens everything up really nice we'll get a beautiful shadow line love it for the top edge i increase the depth of my router bit because i want a more dramatic chamfer now that i have some practice on the bottom i feel more confident doing a deeper chamfer let's do this [Music] so [Music] oh my gosh i'm absolutely covered in chips but this thing looks amazing i'm so excited i'm gonna go clean myself off and i think this baby is ready for finish so [Music] so i know at the beginning of this video i said i could get some nice table legs for around 50 bucks there were some pretty nice coffee table legs for 50 on amazon but the right table legs the ones that really show off the beauty of this table were a little more expensive what that was a close one ah these look so good yes this was the right choice so these beauties were 126 dollars after tax but i think it was worth it let's put them on [Music] so with that the coffee table is finished and now it's time to actually sell this thing i'm a little nervous because i don't have a buyer lined up we actually have to market this table but i had an idea there's a really nice art gallery right down the street from me so i went inside and asked them if i could take some photos of the coffee table inside and they said yes which is huge having some good photos of this table in a nice setting will help bring out its natural beautiful characteristics and help us actually get a good price for this thing shout out to robert's gallery i super appreciate it we actually might be doing a project with them now in the future so talk to your local business owners you might make some good connections so with the time it took to take those photos that brings the total time spent on this project to seven hours and 40 minutes i assume it'll take another 20 minutes or so to actually write the text posts so let's call this in even eight hours spent on this table so my original goal was to pay myself a hundred dollars an hour for the time i spent working on this table to do that taking into account our material costs the table legs the glue and the finish only added about eight dollars we would have to sell this table for 934 934.55 [Music] some people might spend that amount of money on this table i think it's really nice but i don't know if it's worth 934. i don't know some people might pay that but for a list price i think that 600 will make it much more likely that we'll actually make the sale that comes out to 58 an hour for my time spent on this project which i'm still happy with but now we actually have to list it and see if anyone will buy it okay so i posted the table to instagram my neighborhood facebook page and facebook marketplace here's what it says for sale solid wood coffee table handmade from a pallet found on the streets of the annex that's my neighborhood the table is 39 inches long 23 inches wide and 18 inches tall always important to give dimensions the table top is one and three quarter inch thick the wood appears to be a mixture of domestic hardwoods now i know i said earlier in the video that i thought this was cedar but in talking to some of my woodworking friends we actually think it's more likely that this is actually hardwood which is awesome the palette that burnt this table had a lactalis canada stamp implying that it was produced domestically and used in the canadian dairy industry featuring book matched grain details chamfered edges and steel legs price 600 local delivery is available ever since i made the post i've been really nervous that it's not gonna sell it's expensive i don't know if i would spend 600 on a table and i judge my own work i'm insecure about it but i just got my first hit talia said hi morley would you deliver to beep i'm not going to say your neighborhood i love the table and will show my partner hi talia yes of course i will deliver there ask your partner are we gonna sell it to talia i'm so excited and this came through the neighborhood facebook group which i was most optimistic about my chances of selling it there so talia checked with her partner and the 600 price tag was just too expensive for them she was really nice about it she didn't try to lowball me but we were just in wildly different categories so it's looking like it's not going to happen and then i wasn't getting any hits for a few days and i was feeling a little down is this thing actually going to even sell but then today i got a message from michaela who also saw the coffee table on the neighborhood facebook page and she really wants it so she's gonna come by tonight and i think we're gonna make the sale fingers crossed yeah so i found the palette just um near fiesta farm oh that's so cool we were both saying like i just wish i was so crafty and windy like this is where i actually built it are you happy with it yeah i saw it a couple days ago on one of the facebook groups and i was like this is so cool yeah and i even think to like do anything and then you she saw something else in facebook today i was like i saw this really cool table oh wow she's like we should buy it like we're moving to new york in a couple months we want to bring something from like this neighborhood yeah so this would be a good cool thing to like keep with us that's awesome [Music] yeah i was hoping that someone would want it for that reason yeah that's with the story yeah i like the it's canadian wood for sure exactly and handmade yeah this is perfect right cool gonna come to new york that's so great to hear okay thank you i'll see you soon so michaela and her husband bought the table they're gonna bring it with them to new york which is so cool michaela negotiated down to 550 which i'm still very happy with that leaves me with a final hourly rate of 52 an hour i found it really interesting that michaela and her husband both saw the table posted on facebook on their own multiple days apart so that really speaks to the power of posting something over time in many different places i hope this video was helpful if you're interested in making and selling stuff if you would like to directly support this channel i have a patreon page all of my patrons get access to an exclusive behind the scenes instagram page i was posting about this project in real time so if you were a patron you would have seen the whole story as it unfolded i would like to give a special thanks to my top patron my mom kathy curt thank you so much for watching and i will see you in the next video [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Morley Kert

Views: 4,275,311

Keywords: make, maker, making, digital fabrication, 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

Id: F7JBA5LMH3g

Length: 20min 45sec (1245 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 17 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

I don’t think it’s about people with disposable income, you either want or need a table and for this couple taking a table with a story when they move is defo better than an ikea table with no story, people like that kind of thing (ok, not everyone or course).

This table is nice, recycled and hand made (don’t we want to do more to stop waste?). They guy who made this is obviously passionate which makes it even more appealing, made with love no?

I would have bought it

[u/KlippiesEnCoke]

Pallet wood is often infested with bugs. It’s not exactly high quality wood. Sure you can build something with it, but good luck keeping your degrading buggy furniture for any extended period of time.

[u/zersch]

I know absolutely nothing about the intricacies of woodworking, but it looked like he was being pretty dang fast and loose around running saws. Other than that, I enjoyed watching the process.