Pallet Wood Recycle

[tom sawyer]

I saw a double-length (8') pallet sitting outside the building last week and noticed two of the three long boards were yellow wood., so I got permission to break it up and take the wood.  Turned out to be mulberry, some good heavy stuff too.  One of the boards had a lot of problems and the grain was funky, the other had some nice clean stretches.  The upper side was nailed into every 18" or so but the bottom only had three nail places.  Pulled the nails and dragged the bandsaw out yesterday.  Ended up getting two sets of 36" sister billets I'll use for bamboo-backed bows, plus a piece I rounded up for a cane.  It was mostly just fun to recycle.

[George Tsoukalas]

tom sawyer, it is fun to recycle. I guess that is why I like fixing up old arrows. Jawge

[Joec123able]

Mulberry ? Thts weird never woulda thought they would use mulberry in pallets

[JW_Halverson]

I had a small stash of curly maple scavanged from a pallet I spied sitting in an alley once!  Made a couple knife handles and the lid to a cigar humidor out of some of it, too.

[Pat B]

Hey Lenny. Good to see you posting again. Hope all is well in Tom Sawyer land.
 I did a little work around the port in Savannah and we used to find purple heart, green heart and mahogany "chunks" of wood used as dunage on cargo ships.

[PaulN/KS]

That must have been a heavy duty pallet .
Sounds like a good save of some wood that otherwise would have been wasted.

[Eric Krewson]

I worked at a power plant that had a scrap wood pile about 100 yards across, mostly pallets. For years I searched the pile for some usable bow wood, never really found anything to get excited about. I did find a little curly maple to make handles and knick-knacks out of but that was about it.

[tom sawyer]

I was surprised to see yellow wood in a pallet too.  I see a lot of pallets come through here and not much stands out.  Of course the typical pallet has so many nail holes that it wouldn't be bow wood anyway, this one was kind of unusual in that respect.

I think I saw something that looked like purpleheart once.  Gotta wonder what people are thinking, making pallets out of this kind of stuff.

I read more than I post anymore, mostly because I'm not making a lot of bows.  But I do think about it quite a bit, moreso around MOJAM time.

[PEARL DRUMS]

Same here Eric. I see lots of skids every day. Pine of all sorts, fake mahogany, maple, oak's and even ash here and there. Never found a set of runners or slats I could splice and back.

[Pappy]

Good to see ya on again Lennie ,sounds like a good find,only pallets we find around here is pine,and not very good pine at that. 
   Pappy

[tom sawyer]

Well thats for the best.  I've heard people around here like to buy spruce for pallets, even that has better uses.  We just had a spruce blow down and I had some cut for instrument tops.