I’ve had 6 pesky pallets taking up space in our garage for what feels like forever. Now that the weather is getting better in the UK, I decided it’s time to break them down. Also, I ran out of broken down pallet wood and I need some for my next project so this is really not optional at this stage.
Over the years, I tried breaking down pallets in a few ways: using a wrecking bar, hammer and chisel, and a pallet breaker. I find that the pallet breaker option is the easiest, however, it is not easy at all. I also still use the hammer and chisel to remove the blocks connecting the top and bottom planks. This link here is the type of pallet breaker that I use. In this post, I will cover how I use it.
By the way, if you don’t have any pallets right now but are considering getting some, you may find this post useful before you embark on this journey. Also please be aware breaking apart pallets is physically hard and frustrating. It is certainly not for everyone. If you decide to go ahead, check out this post on advice about where you can get pallets in the UK.
SHOULD YOU GET A PALLET BREAKER?
As I said, I use a pallet breaker and this is what we will cover in this blog post, along with a little bit of chisel and hammer action. However, those things cost about £30 so it may not be viable for you if you only have a couple of pallets to break down. In that case, I would suggest a normal wrecking bar or failing that chisel and hammer. If you have none and don’t want to buy any, your last option is to perhaps saw the planks off between the areas where they are joined but this will result in very short planks which won’t be suitable for many projects.
HOW TO DISMANTLE PALLETS USING A PALLET BREAKER
STEP 1: REMOVE THE TOP LAYER OF THE PALLET
Using a pallet breaker bar is all about leverage. The idea is to shove it under a plank in some way so that when you pull it towards the ground or push it away from the ground, it will lift the plank off.
I start by laying the pallet face up on a level surface and removing all the planks off the top of the pallet. This is by far the easiest job, as there are usually plenty of leverage points. In the pictures below you can see how I put the bar under the first plank and then I pull on it to bring the handle towards myself. This starts to lift the plank out. You can also see that this plank actually snapped as I was removing it. This happens all the time – it is so frustrating! At the end of the post, I will include a picture of all the pallets I got that were useable vs all the scrap.
STEP 2: REMOVE THE BOTTOM LAYER OF THE PALLET
Once all of the top planks are off, it’s time to flip the pallet over and remove the bottom layer. This is usually a bit tricky as there tend to be fewer easy leverage points available. How you do this really depends on the type of pallet you have too as they are all so different in the way they are put together.
With this particular pallet, I could only remove the top and bottom planks of the layer. I did this by angling the breaker and sticking just a single fork under the ends of each plank. I then pulled the handle towards myself until the plank popped off. After both were removed, this left me with 3 separate sections where two planks were being held together by 3 pesky blocks.
STEP 3: REMOVE THE SEPARATING BLOCKS
To pry those planks off the blocks, I used a hammer and chisel. The chisel I use is a wide woodworking chisel which is now my special pallet chisel as it is obviously not sharp enough for actual woodworking anymore. I find that the thinness of it as well as the slope really helps get into those joins where the blocks are really on tightly.
The way I do this is to lay the plank/ planks with the block attached to them in a way that will make it comfortable for me to hammer the chisel in a little bit in between the pieces of wood. When it’s in a bit, I lift it up until either the chisel slips out or it won’t lift anymore. I then repeat the process going a bit deeper with my chisel every time. Eventually, the block and the plank will get separated although it may take a while. Once all the planks are free from the blocks you are done with the breaking apart part!
A tip on this. I find that when using a chisel and hammer and you are trying to lift the plank from one edge, it is much more likely to snap. The best way is to try and lift it from an end. The illustration below shows what I mean. The green arrow is the direction you want to try to pry the blocks off as much as possible. If you do it from the side like the red arrow shows, this is much more likely to snap the plank.
STEP 4: REMOVING NAILS FROM LOOSE PALLET PLANKS
Now that you have some lovely pallet planks, you will see that they are full of nails. These nails will need to be removed before you use the planks (obviously). The easiest way to do this is to use a claw hammer like this:
- Lay your plank on a table or something like that with the end of the plank where the nails are hanging off the edge. The sticky-outy sharp nail ends need to be pointing upwards towards the ceiling
- Hold your plank with one hand and with the other use your hammer to knock the nails back out of the plank
- Flip your plank and use the claw side of your hammer to pull the nail out
You will run into some weirdness when you do this. Here are a few tips for the different nail problems I ran into before:
- Your nail’s sharp end is looped back into the wood: knock a screwdriver under the loop and lever the nail up until one end of the loop pops up. Use a pair of pliers to straighten the nail and use the above method to knock it out.
- Your nail is bent: use pliers to straighten it and use the above method to know it out.
- Your nail is snapped inside the plank: use a thick flat headed screwdriver. Place this directly on the nail and use your hammer to gently knock the screwdriver in. As it goes in, it should be pushing the nail out of the other side. As soon as the nail head is out enough, use your claw hammer to pull it out.
- Your nail has no head: use the above method but instead of a claw hammer use your pliers to pull it out.
- Your plank has staples in it: use your flat headed screwdriver. Stick it under the staple and lever it up until one end of the staple pops up. Use your pliers to pull the other end out.
After you think you got all the nails, I would highly recommend using a magnet of some sort to go over each plank to double check. You don’t want to leave a nail in and ruin your tools when they run across it.
STEP 5: GRAB A COLD BEER BECAUSE YOU’RE DONE AND THAT WAS HARD WORK!
Seriously, if you get through it, well done. It’s not easy and not everyone has the patience to do it.
WHAT TO DO WITH SCRAP WOOD FROM DISMANTLING A WOODEN PALLET
As promised here are two pictures. The first one shows my load of planks (before I de-nailed them) and the second one shows the load of scrap I have leftover. I think I broke down around 3 full pallets here. The only bits of wood I put in the scrap pile are either the blocks that were holding the pallet together or any planks that are broken all the way down. If only one end splits, I just cut this off and keep the shorter plank. As you can see this is still a massive amount of scrap.
There are a few things you can do with it:
- Provided the pallet was safe to use (didn’t have a chemical treatment applied to it) you can use it as firewood
- You can take it to the recycling centre (this is what I do). It’s ok to put it into the ‘wood’ section
- If you have a chipper, you can turn it into chips or sawdust and compost it (again, provided it’s safe). Make sure to remove all the nails if you’re doing this, don’t break your chipper!
I hope you found this post useful and don’t be too put off by the amount of work that goes into it. I personally think pallets are worth the effort for those projects where they can be used, even just for the sustainability factor (see this post on environmental woodworking). Additionally, new wood is so expensive these days, that it’s hard to justify spending so much money on a hobby.
Enjoy pallet creating!
