" on Tue, 10 Mar
2020 13:44:52 -0700 (PDT) typed in rec.woodworking the following:

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

I'm not all that knowledgeable either, but I can tell pine/fur
from "that's not pine or fur". B-)

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.

All depends. I still have the 4x4s (5 & 8 foot long) from the
dumpster at work.

These are small pallets, the resulting boards are 12 to 15 inches.
"Big enough" for what I have in mind. Okay, they're what I have
":what can I make with what I have on hand?" has been a design factor
since I was 7.

I have made some beautiful small presentation boxes from the
hardwood slats. You start by scraping the saw marks and "dirt" off
the surfaces ...

I'll also admit, this is not "production work" but what I do for
my own interest.
--
pyotr filipivich
Next month's Panel: Graft - Boon or blessing?