Homemade device for dismantling pallets. Device for dismantling of pallets and wooden floors. So what is a euro pallet

25.04.2020

Sometimes at the disposal of the summer resident are used (used) so-called. euro pallets. This, of course, is not about shower trays, but about wooden pallets, made to make it more convenient for loaders to turn over some kind of load that is laid on pallets. They are assembled, I must say, in good conscience, on ruffled or screw nails, so that they would not figure it out on their own during operation. The wood there is mostly birch. But it's a great material to make. garden furniture or use it as ancillary products. For example, formwork, light railings, garden furniture, benches, deck chairs, etc. One of my acquaintances did this in general - he made a fence from second-hand pallets. And not bad, I must say, a fence.

The main problem when disassembling euro pallets is their high-quality assembly. But this is if you approach them without a flight of thought. I have met discussions on several forums on dismantling pallets for building materials. And alas, he noted that the stereotype is working. "Knocked down with nails? “We need to use a nail puller.” But the thing is just that the nails are non-removable! Nails ruffed or screw. Therefore, an attempt to extract them ends either with a breakdown of the board into which they are driven, or with the use of a saw to cut the pallet into firewood.

Meanwhile, there is a way to disassemble the pallet, even to the finish, and quickly and with virtually no damage to the material. And from the tools you only need ... a small hatchet. Now I'll tell you how it's done.

Often, the summer resident does not need to disassemble the top plate itself is full. It is a product in itself, very applicable in the economy. And you just need to get rid of 3 boards to which this die is attached.

Please note that these three boards, which serve as a support for the pallet, are attached through 9 wooden blocks. On one side, 3 boards are nailed to them, on the other, the pallet plate itself. Moreover, in 99 cases out of 100 nails are hammered across the fibers of the tree! (And this is normal. Who clogs along ... Although there are such pallets.) And this means that a short bar is extremely easy to split. He's almost pierced by nails already. It remains only to finish the job with a light blow of the hatchet blade. 3 hits - and the board with the remnants of the bar itself is separated from the pallet plate. So we separate all three boards of the pallet.

Now we need to get rid of the remnants of the bar on the die. Nothing complicated either. Proportioning the force of impact, with the tip of the hatchet blade we prick the remains of the bar. The extreme pieces fly off immediately, the middle ones still resist and hold on to the nails. We pierce them too. Don't be afraid to hit a nail with a hatchet. In this case, you are not hitting across the nail, but along. Therefore, serrating an ax blade is quite problematic. It simply glides over the nail, chipping the wood.

We get rid of the remnants of the bar with a few blows of the butt of the hatchet. At the same time, we prepare fuel for a samovar or barbecue.

That's actually all. We have at our disposal a die with completely intact planks and 3 more planks separately with the remnants of the bar, which can be disposed of in a similar way.

As you can see, all the fears when disassembling the pallet are greatly exaggerated. A little ingenuity and at your disposal mountains of almost free building material. Parsing one pallet takes no more than 3-5 minutes.

To disassemble quickly a large number of pallets or, for example, replacing the wooden floor in the house - you can’t do without improvised means.

Usually, a nail puller with a hammer is used for this, but even with these tools, work is sometimes time-consuming.

To make a homemade product you will need metal pipe with a diameter of 87 mm, a pipe with a diameter of 25 mm, a steel plate 5-6 mm thick and a construction angle 32x32 mm. You will also need nuts and bolts.

Main stages of work

First of all from steel pipe with a diameter of 87 mm, cut off a piece 125 mm long with a grinder. Then, from a piece of metal 5-6 mm thick, it will be necessary to cut two levers.

After the levers are cut, they must be sanded. Further, at the ends of the blanks (in the center), the author drills holes and cuts threads for the M8 bolt.

At the next stage, both levers must be welded along the ends of a piece of pipe with a diameter of 125 mm. Welded seams will need to be cleaned with a grinder.

From the building corner, the author cuts off two blanks 10 cm long. In the center of one of the shelves of the corners, one hole with a diameter of 8 mm must be drilled. Further, using bolts with nuts, the corners will need to be attached to the levers.

For details on how to make a device for dismantling pallets and wooden floors with your own hands, we recommend watching the video on the website.

Personally, I try to make all the buildings and crafts in the country from improvised materials and save on obvious things.
Pallets or pallets - consumable, which is easy to find in the backyards of shops, near bases and warehouses, is simply abandoned. And it does not even require special skill to give these boards a second life. Using craft pallets as a source of free but high-quality material is very simple. And with the right approach, the tree will last for years.

So what is a euro pallet?

Or, as it is officially called, a pallet? A lattice made of boards hammered together with nails, with three special longitudinal legs-supports, which are needed for its transportation and movement using stackers, loaders or manual rokla. Pallets are used almost everywhere where you need to move and store any goods, boxes, etc.

The most common standard pallet size is 120x80 centimeters. Often there are also pallets 120x100 centimeters. There are also square (small) 80x80 cm. There are also non-standard ones, both smaller sizes - 70x80, 60x80 and even 30x80 centimeters, and large sizes up to two meters in length. But non-standard pallets are usually made individually for the specific cargo with which they will be used. I will consider the most used pallets of the standard 120x80 centimeters as the most common and, therefore, more easily accessible for crafts.

A standard 120x80 cm pallet consists of three 120 cm long boards used as supports, and 5-6-7 of the same boards on the loading platform. Between them are kolobashki-spacers about 10x10x10 centimeters in size. For the rigidity of the frame, three transverse boards are used, the length of which is equal to the width of the pallet - 80 or 100 centimeters.

Draw your attention! In this article, I do not at all consider the so-called construction pallets used to transport bricks. The fact is that they, as a rule, are made from the residual birch slab. The boards in them are “killed” by a lot of stubborn brick crumbs, in general, no crafts can be made from building pallets, except for barbecue coals.

Usually on pallets is standard pine edged board 10 cm wide and 2 cm thick. There are also exceptions to the rule. Rarely, but pallets from a board 12 and even 14 centimeters wide come across. Approximately 3-5 percent of pallets are made not from pine, but from birch boards. But birch, unlike pine, is too short-lived, as a building material is practically unsuitable, so such pallets are good only for kindling. And I also met pallets from European countries made of BUK several times! Can you imagine what beauty can be made from well-crafted beech boards!?!

It is very easy to distinguish a pine board from a birch one: firstly, birch has looser wood, and secondly, the texture of wood is more clearly expressed on a pine board, it is more wavy, annual rings are brighter colored, knots are present. Pine boards are yellowish-brownish. Birch is more whitish and uniform. Another difference: having been in the air and in contact with water, pine boards darken and turn gray, and birch boards give off blue.

This difference is clearly visible in the photo - on the left there are three pine boards, and on the right there is one birch board.

We disassemble the pallet into components

Disassembling the pallet into boards is not easy, but very simple. For this we need:

normal hammer
crowbar nail puller
Pliers

If you have a special nail hammer on the farm, which has a butt on one side and a bent nail puller on the other, the first two points can be safely combined into one. But it is more convenient to work separately with a hammer and a crowbar-nail puller, since sometimes it becomes necessary to hammer the crowbar into the gap between the boards.

So: we put the pallet with the cargo area down, and with the supports up. The first operation: remove the support-legs. To do this, we drive the nail puller under the spacer bowl, that is, between it and the cargo platform, and, shaking it, we tear off the spacer from the platform first from one edge, then the middle one and finally from the other edge. This operation is repeated on the other two supports. Now we have a separate pallet platform and three supports with spacers. We knock down the spacers from the support boards. To do this, it is enough to put the support board vertically and knock it off the board with a few hammer blows on the spacer. What to do next with these spacers-kolobashkas - I never figured out, I tried to make an end pavement, but they rot in the ground quickly enough, so I use it for firewood.

So, three support boards were released. Now we take out the nails from them. This is where pliers come in handy to fix bent nails, otherwise it is very inconvenient to knock them out with a hammer.

Important: during all the work on disassembling the pallet, do not forget that nails stick out of the boards. In the heat of work, you can get carried away and get injured - step on a nail! Constantly control your movements in the area of the lying dismantled pallet. And do not forget about protective gloves for hands - there are a lot of splinters even on semi-planed boards, and you often have to turn the pallet during disassembly.

We set aside three already finished boards - the former supports to the side and disassemble the site. To do this, you just need to remove three short transverse boards. Here the order of work is arbitrary. You can first remove the middle one, it is easier to remove. You can first two extreme, and then the middle one. It's more convenient for someone.

And finally final stage- free all boards from nails. If you plan to later process the boards with a planer, then carefully inspect the surface of the boards, especially in the area where the nails are attached. Sometimes it happens that when assembling a pallet, a nail breaks, and only a hat remains in the wood. If you don’t notice it, you will have to change the planer knife. It often happens that thin wires remain in the places where nails are driven in - the remnants of the nail clips used in automatic hammers. Also carefully check the bottom surfaces of the support boards - it happens that small pebbles get stuck in the uneven boards. This can also damage your planer.

Board processing

So, we dismantled the pallet into boards and got 9 boards 120 centimeters long and three boards 80 centimeters each. "Why was all this necessary?" - there will definitely be some who will ask this question. I will answer this question at the end of the article, but for now let's move on to the next step - processing the boards.

First, we will reject unusable boards - with cracks, deep chips and other severe damage, they are unlikely to fit for crafts.
Before planing, it is better to go over the surfaces again with a stiff brush, cleaning off dirt and dust. This operation will significantly extend the life of the planer knives.

Then, in fact, we plan, achieving the required smoothness of the surfaces.

Pallet boards have one drawback - there are nail holes at the ends and in the middle. Depending on the further use of the boards, these holes can be puttied with wood putty, then they will be completely invisible. However, if the boards are planned to be used for auxiliary country buildings or crafts, the holes can be left as they are - after impregnation or painting of the boards, they become almost invisible.

And, finally, the last, third stage is the protection of wood.

Here, each country master uses his favorite and proven tool. The most common and free is to smear the boards with working off, that is, used engine oil. I do not like this option - unaesthetic and dirty. If you do it beautifully - so to the end.

I use bioprotection for wood "Barrier-BIO". Inexpensive effective composition, besides beautifully staining wood, effectively reinforcing the structure of the board. Its cost is around 35 rubles per liter, it is sold in 5- and 10-liter canisters.

The surface treatment technology is simple: apply with a brush, roller, spray on the surface in three layers, with intermediate drying of each layer for about 20 minutes. The term depends on the temperature at which the processing is performed. The main thing is not to allow the surface to dry completely before applying the next layer, that is, apply the next layer on a slightly damp surface.

Subject to the technology, the composition impregnates the wood to a depth of 1 to 2 millimeters (I personally checked it). And the color after processing becomes very beautiful. The cost of the impregnating material is simply ridiculous - in terms of one board, it takes 50 grams of liquid, that is, less than two rubles.

The photo shows all three stages of board processing: on the left - freshly cut blank boards, in the middle - already planed, and on the right - the final result - boards impregnated with a protective compound, ready for summer cottage construction.

Stupidity or thrift?

And now, as an epilogue, I will answer the question that was raised earlier: "Why was all this necessary?"
Well, I will answer: "Let's do a little arithmetic calculations."

The cost of one cubic meter of edged pine board in the nearest construction market is 6750 rubles. One board from a euro pallet has dimensions of 1.2x0.1x0.02 meters. It turns out that the volume of one board is 0.0024 cubic meters. We multiply by the cost of a cubic meter - 6750, we get the cost of one board from a euro pallet - 16 rubles 20 kopecks. From the dismantling of one pallet, we have, on average, 9 boards. This is 150 rubles per pallet for 15 minutes of dismantling and 15 minutes of planing.
I agree, it’s easier for someone to go to the timber exchange, buy 6-meter boards there, cut them on the spot to take them out in their car. Or hire a long truck for an additional fee. Each country master chooses what is more convenient for him.

Examples of using boards from euro pallets for country crafts

Fence

In the fall of last year, a fence was built along the facade suburban area. Length - 20 meters. It took 130 boards that were once Euro pallets.

The savings on the fence amounted to 2100 rubles.

One of the neighbors, seeing this fence, asked for a long time where I bought it, and who built it for me. He is one of those summer residents who find it easier to buy and hire workers than to do something himself, so he asked me to make for him a low border 40 centimeters high from the same picket fence for his garden paths.
On this order, I also earned more than 2 thousand rubles in a week, which allowed me to acquire a long-desired and necessary jigsaw without prejudice to a small family budget.

compost bin

On August 17, 2013, a two-year cycle compost bin-bunker was built for two containers with a volume of 1.8 cubic meters each. For its construction, 70 boards from euro pallets were used, which saved 1130 rubles.

Table with benches

But for these two soft benches and a table with two large drawers built for the summer kitchen, it was not even necessary to disassemble the pallets into boards. All this is made from solid fragments. Here is such a summer cottage furniture set from pallets I got.

Only two large drawers in the table are made of boards. Here I even find it difficult to talk about savings, because a set of a table and two benches cost me absolutely free.

birdhouse

And for the soul and beauty, small architectural forms can be made from fragments of boards:

House for feathered dacha orderlies.

For such a living space, they will thank you by destroying all pests on your beautiful plantings.

Bird feeders

A feeder for them, so that they survive the harsh winter

I made a feeder and hung it up after the TV news broadcast a story that out of 10 titmouse birds only one or two survive until spring ...

bench

A small soft bench that relieves stress from the back while weeding the garden.

formwork

And, finally, brutal formwork for making foundation blocks for the future barn at my favorite dacha.

These are just a few examples of the work and crafts I have done lately with free building materials obtained from Euro pallets. Soon a separate detailed article with drawings and photographs will be published about each of them.

Ahead - plans "hulk". For their implementation, I continue to collect euro-pallets and disassemble them into free, but high-quality building material for my favorite dacha.

Ideas for crafts from pallets can be downloaded.

If you are planning to dismantle pallets on a permanent basis, either occasionally or in a mass production environment, it will be useful for you to have the right tools for work. There are many options for palletizing, including bars, hand-held power tools, and equipment for high-volume recycling operations. They are discussed below. If you are going to dismantle multiple pallets, this can be done without any of the special tools discussed in this article.

Pry bars

The support is intended for manual removal of pallet boards. There are two main styles of pin design. These styles include duck and double fork. The duck counter is well suited for picking up lead slab from the edge of the pallet without dismantling the wood during removal. The jaw of the instrument is positioned above the board, and then the handle is lifted up. A double fork tray is used to remove internal deck boards. Its effectiveness depends on the heel of the bar lying on the string, and then using a lever, the forks rise under the next board and pry it out of the stringer.

The accompanying image for this article shows a combination board that has a duck bill patch on one end and a double fork on the other.

Power Hand Tools

Power tools can extract most of the effort from pallet removal. Two general approaches for hand tools powered saws include the reciprocating saw, often referred to as the Sawzall, as well as the Nail Kicker.

A reciprocating saw is used to trim the nails at the joint where they connect the wood components. The Nail Kicker is similar to a pneumatic nail tool, except instead of driving the nail into the wood, it is designed to drive the nails out of the wood, or at least push them deep enough to easily free the deck boards from the pallet.

For more information visit www. nailkicker. com.

Palletizers

Palletizers are the workhorses of successful high volume pallet recycling operations. There are two main categories of commercial demolition machines. These include the pressure type, often using round cutting heads, as well as the popular dismantling of the band saw.

1. Pressure sensors. Dismantling devices high pressure first appeared in the 1970s. Typically, this approach involves free swivel discs with an adjustable table top. The pallet is fed through discs that shift the fasteners at the point where the deck slabs meet the pallet stringer. The speed of the operation is determined in part by the number of heads. With three cutting heads, only the upper and lower pallet passes are required to achieve disassembly. One criticism of this style of hardware is that while it can be very fast, up to 30 percent of the pallet components are damaged in disassembly. In addition, the nails must be removed or flattened.

2. Bandage disassemblers. Belt depalletizers have become the workhorse of palletizers for depalletizing. They use a band blade that runs high above the table, which will allow it to cut through the bottom boards where they meet the stringer.

Recyclers appreciate the superior lumber recovery as well as a clean cut that leaves no nails.

Any type of device can be reinforced with additional equipment such as conveyors to ensure the flow of disassembled parts from the device for sorting and stacking or further processing, for example, to a cut-off saw to cut pieces to a shorter length.

There are several pallet removal equipment providers to meet the needs of your pallet recycling business. Some of these providers include:

Pallet Group

smart products

Tracing equipment

Sometimes at the disposal of the summer resident are used (used) so-called. euro pallets. This, of course, is not about shower trays, but about wooden pallets, made to make it more convenient for loaders to turn over some kind of load that is laid on pallets. They are assembled, I must say, in good conscience, on ruffled or screw nails, so that they would not figure it out on their own during operation. The wood there is mostly birch. But it is an excellent material for making garden furniture or using it as ancillary products. For example, formwork, light railings, garden furniture, benches, deck chairs, etc. One of my acquaintances did this in general - he made a fence from second-hand pallets. And not bad, I must say, a fence.

We get rid of the remnants of the bar with a few blows of the butt of the hatchet. At the same time, we prepare fuel for a samovar or barbecue.

That's actually all. We have at our disposal a die with completely intact planks and 3 more planks separately with the remnants of the bar, which can be disposed of in a similar way.

As you can see, all the fears when disassembling the pallet are greatly exaggerated. A little ingenuity and you have mountains of practically free building material at your disposal. Parsing one pallet takes no more than 3-5 minutes.