Pallet Pal

With the addition of a ute added to Al's shed fleet, i'm now able to transportate large stuff around, in particular pallets. 

 Pallets are great. They're free and mostly made from hardwood. Pallets are designed to never come aapart toensure the longest lifespan. This is achieved by using spiral nails, sometimes glue coated.

These nails are designed by satan himself. They are very very difficult to remove with a hammer, you really need quite a lot of mechanical advantage to remove these. It also makes prying the boards off a pallet without damaging the pallet very changeling. There are various methods around the internet of breaking down pallets, but all seem to be more difficult than is necessary and either result in a low yield or cut off nails which are difficult to remove.

Luckily Izzy Swan over at think wood works has developed a cracker tool to solve this problem.

The pallet pal.

Check out it being built and in action here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kpcur7RTDVU

So i decided to make one.

Because it straddles both side of the board being removed and having a long handle it really makes short work of breaking down pallets.

In the three pallets i've broken down i've only cracked one board.

If you have the urge to break down pallets i strongly suggest you to consider making one of these. Its quick to make and quite cheap even if you have to buy the plywood and threaded rod.

Till next time.

Al