J. Clarke on Tue, 10 Mar 2020 19:16:51
-0400 typed in rec.woodworking the following:
On Tue, 10 Mar 2020 13:44:52 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:


Again I realized that pallets come in three kinds of wood.
- Hard wood
- Soft wood
- Fire wood.

Back in the late 1980s, early 1990s, when I worked in a warehouse and dealt with pallets, I usually saw only rough pine pallets. Its possible there might have been some other woods in there. But I was far less knowledgeable about wood back then

Standard shaped pallets are about 4 foot by 6 foot. Three 2x4s in the middle with cutouts at either end of the 2x4 so forklifts can pick them up from the side. Bottom slats are about 3 of them. Top slats are the whole 6 foot length with a half inch gap between slats. All of these slats are roughly 1x4s. Rough. So you'd be lucky to plane and joint them down to 1/2" thick finished. And the 2x4 middle pieces, by the time you trimmed off the cutouts on the bottom, you'd end up with only a 2x2 6 foot long.

So, unless you need rough wood, and mostly small pieces, pallets really don't provide good wood to use. Especially not furniture.

That's pallets from the US. More and more gets imported.

I have seen, and heard of, wondrous woods being used for shipping
containers and pallets, because In The Country Of Origin, that's what
they have handy.
One story was of the guy who traded a bunch of mahogany plywood
(iirc) from shipping containers for a hand made guitar. "such a
deal."
--
pyotr filipivich
Next month's Panel: Graft - Boon or blessing?