Hey everyone, I work in a warehouse and can get free pallets that look pretty good. I'm tempted to make a butcher block style desk with those meme iron pipe legs etc.
Anyone done much like this? My main concerns are:
1. The pallet tops are pretty thin, and will likely need to be planed down to ensure smooth contact for the glue. How much do wood processing places typically charge to push through.. 8(?) pallets worth of top planks so that they are even?
2. Price I'm ok with the elbow grease involved and have most of the tools, but how much is it going to cost me in glue using those thin pallet tops? Any cheaper way to get the Iron pipe stuff? Most people who make desk legs say it cost $200-260 fml.
3. If anyone knows of a really solid somewhat heavy desk that's ideal for computer use and reasonably priced please post it. Ikea kinda stuff turns me off because of its fragile and easily destroyed nature. ATM I use an Ikea Tromso style bed with the under desk and its driving me nuts for gaming. I just want a solid ass desk thats the right height for gaming. Those 1950's style drafting desks are too much of a pain to move and wont be suitable till i own a home.
Anything else I'm not considering?
Know why /diy/ mocks pallets?
They're the cheapest shittiest wood money can buy. By the time they're thrown out, they're so broken down that even picking them up can cause boards to fall off. The wood you get isn't worth the effort, and you're going to get more waste than usable wood.
They're great for fires though.
Honestly OP, if you're going to put any effort into this, then at least buy semi decent wood.
Surely you don't want to be eating off that wood when you have no idea what they were palleting on it?
Jimmies rustled.
Autism triggered
10/10 will follow thread.
>pallet wood
>pipe legs
>cheap fuck wants real furniture
Oh Jesus help me.
use the edge wood of pallets, glue them together so it looks like a bowling alley like this
http://www.instructables.com/id/Butcher-Block-Hardwood-Table/?ALLSTEPS
That being said, if you're not ready to drop $150 on black iron pipe from Home Depot, just fucking stop right now. That's what I paid for doing pic related. It's sturdy as fuck, but it was the most expensive part of the project, including buying power tools.
>>1002610
>http://www.instructables.com/id/Butcher-Block-Hardwood-Table/?ALLSTEPS
Looks roughly like what I was going for.
I dont see why anyone would rage.
1. I dont eat off a table, I use plates like a human being.
2. I'd only use pallet wood not treated with toxic shit.
3. I've seen stuff made from home depot lumber and I have a hard time beliving using 2x4's for the desk surface will end up better looking or more solid feeling than a nice thick butcher block look.
I'd also feel a lot less bad about fucking with the wood to do things like embed a wireless charger, maybe run some USB ports to the sides/front... notches/points for the monitor arm's etc.
A planer really is the most important thing to buy if you are going to work pallet wood.
Sometimes at work we get rough cut wood and finish it ourselves. The bare minimum you need is a planer and table saw but a jointer sure helps.
>>1002623
>have a hard time beliving using 2x4's for the desk surface will end up better looking or more solid feeling than a nice thick butcher block look.
pallets are hardwood, usually oak. your common 2x4 is pine.
>>1002624
I dont mind the elbow greese of breaking down pallets or glueing things together, but I'd like to avoid building up Arnold size pythons by dozens of hours of hand planing.
I thought most wood processing shops/advanced home woodworkers had machines you could pass wood through to even it out and make a uniform height (on a per board basis if not across all boards). I'd gladly pay to have that done as long as it wasnt *too* pricey.
>>1002627
So we're in agreement then? pine is cheap, doesnt stain well and looks like... pine, but the hardwood I get from pallets should make a thick ass (potentially) high quality surface?
>>1002628
Yes. That's what I said. You need a planer.
Everyone in this thread is using the term "butcher's block" wrong. It looks like moron furniture designers started it, but that's no excuse for you anons.
The distinguishing feature of a butcher's block is that the wood's end-grain is oriented upward. This is so you can chop into it over and over with a heavy cleaver and you won't do (much) damage. If the wood was oriented parallel to the ground the top would destroy itself after a few good whacks.
Pic related is an actual butcher's block with the end grain oriented to be such a block.
>>1002628
>, but the hardwood I get from pallets should make a thick ass (potentially) high quality surface?
Not that guy, but no. Pallet wood is used for pallets because it's the worst, shittiest wood they couldn't find a better use for. You're going to have tons of checking and cracking, and if you want a perfectly smooth surface you're going to need to fill the wood and do a ton of finishing with a film finish.
>>1002093
You know you posted a slab table, right? Which are pretty meme-y in their own right.
>>1002631
I've seen plenty of good wood in pallets, it's just ROUGH as fuck. A shop near me gets trees cut down by the city and mills them on site to make pallets. No kiln drying and again very rough milling. Pallet wood isn't the worst wood they can find, it's the cheapest.
>>1002630
>chop into
>won't do (much) damage
no, its so that your knife wont dull as fast. the end grain gives way to knife blade, instead of resisting it
>>1002634
see pic
>>1002629
I forgot the word for planer but yes I'd ideally like to borrow someone elses powered planer since I'd only need it once.
>>1002630
Thank you for this. Yes what I mean is not that configuration. I mean taking those thin POS planks on top of a pallet, discarding the worthless ones and cutting them down to remove knots/crookedness so that I have a uniform 2 inch thick slab.
>>1002632
Yes thank you. It's just a different style of wood table, it wont bite.
>>1002633
I hear both things, pallet wood is cheap AF etc and pallet wood uses the cheapest most useless versions of good hardwoods (for strength). I'm sure there are pine pallets and I'm sure that for engines and transmissions there are some engineered pallets that might just specify better wood.
>>1002639
A note here, I might go thicker than 2 inches. I'd have to see how heavy it gets as I plan it out and see how big I want it. Again the idea is to make a sturdy as fuck desk (pipes for legs) with a solid and strong top. I even want it to have some weight to it so it doesn't rock and tip over on accidental contact. I like furniture that pushes back a little bit.
>>1002634
Not dulling might be a nice bonus, but not destroying your block is the reason they're done that way.
Imagine if the spaghetti in that pic was turned sideways and you chopped it a few times. What would happen?
Some thing that happens when you use a chisel to chop out a mortise
>>1002642
Oh you mean like this?
I'd be more concerned about the expensive knife than the cheap wood that can be refinished
>>1002643
Not that I want this digression to continue but IIRC actual butcher blocks are really expensive and made from some high grade wood. They can be refinished though since you have 10+ inches to work with.
>>1002643
Metal knives can be sharpened easily and quickly hundreds to thousands of times.
The wood can never bee restored to its original condition. The best you can do it's cut off the top quarter inch and start fresh.
End grain has self healing properties. Edge grain does not.
If you want to make a decent cheap but her block, go buy some high quality 2x4s and save five hours of work.
>>1002610
THIS.
Pipe is ridiculously expensive. I had some pipe ideas and ended up using copper (which looked better in the end but isn't as robust).
That being said, I've made some cool stuff out of pallet wood. It really wasn't for the pallet meme though, but just because you can get really aged wood for next to nothing. If you can find other aged wood (like from a barn or something) it is often better wood than what you get from pallets.
Either way, go for it and don't listen to these bitches. Makers gonna make and all that. Although it might be cheaper to grab an orbital sander and sand the tops level rather than have them planed. Won't be perfect but will probably be good enough.
>>1002093
Get you pallets and break them apart, stack the wood (indoors) for as long as you can to get as much moisture out of it as possible.
>>1002783
>Pipe is ridiculously expensive
Try looking for it in a salvage yard, it'll be way cheaper and once you spray over it with some paint no one will be able to tell where it came from, either that or make the legs from wood too.
>>1002813
how ya gonna thread your mismatched pipe, bro?
>>1002623
>thick butcher block look
>I'd only use pallet wood
choose one. Also you can mimick abuse style (like furniture by Restoration Hardware) by beating the wood with a bag of nails and smacking it with a hammer here and there. I built furniture out of pallets when I was in college it was a nice little pintrist style project but to be honest I'd never do it again. Sure I was proud of my pallet coffee table and I still have it but its so much easier and better just to get some decent lumber from the local mill
>>1002648
You don't sound like you've done much woodwork. I have made many wood cutting boards and no matter what type of wood they need some regular maintenance if you are concerned with how they look. You don't need "cut the top off a quarter inch". I recommend regularly hitting the board with steel wool and oiling it or using beeswax. Alternatively, you could wait til its full of scratches and then hit it with 40-60 grit then work your way back to finish grade and again, oil or wax.
Theres no way youre going to use a metal knife on a wooden board and keep the wood in 'original condition'. So it makes perfect sense to have a butcher block board which gives to the knife, keeping the blade sharper, longer
>>1002915
If you have a buddy that installs propane heaters/piping he'll have one. Alternatively you could rent the tool, I forget what its called. It's a metal tripod that basically clamps on the pipe and you twist a cutting blade and roll it around the pipe to thread it. Not too difficult, just have to borrow one from somebody. Or go to home depot or lowes. they have one on the floor for people who need specific size threaded pipe. Just start using it and see if anyone intervenes lol
>>1002645
Yeah people like to work with my 10 inch.
;-)
>>1002919
>Alternatively, you could wait til its full of scratches and then hit it with 40-60 grit then work your way back to finish grade and again, oil or wax.
It's not a cutting board that gets scratches, it's a butcher's block. You put animal parts on it and hack at them with a meat cleaver until you crush the bone and you get your cut. If you miss or if you misjudge the force you need, you end up embedding your cleaver into the wood.
When I say restored, I mean leveling the surface and getting rid of the gouges. I don't mean appearance. Pic related is a worn butcher's block. Note the gouges. Note how the surface is curved. That's because someone hacked at it with a meat cleaver for years. In fact, the guy who last used that block was probably sharpening his cleaver too much- if the blade is too sharp you just end up going through your meat and destroying the wood underneath.
>>1003028
>>1002919
Here's another pic that shows an antique block and some of the tools that might be used.
The normal way to use one of these would be to cut up a whole animal carcass with the meat cleavers. These aren't used for preparing meat (that you might do on a cutting board) this sort of thing is for separating rough cuts. Removing the legs from the body, piecing the body, etc.
When you were done, or periodically if you were doing a lot of work, you would use a metal scraper to clear the work surface of debris and fluids. You can see the bottom of some scrapers on the wall behind the block.
Once every week or month, depending on how much work you do, you would heavily oil the block so that the oil soaks in and saturates the fibers. You might flood the surface with oil and leave it to sit overnight. This causes the fibers to swell up and seal themselves against other fluids (blood, bile, etc.), thus preventing bacteria from breeding.
The reason the work surfaces become curved over time is the combination of chopping plus scraping. The chopping weakens the wood's end-grain, which is then pulled out by repeated scraping. If you do that every day for a few years, you end up with nicely curved wood.
>>1003039
Never knew the process. Thanks for the info
>>1002919
>I have made many wood cutting boards and no matter what type of wood they need some regular maintenance if you are concerned with how they look.
Also, all wood cutting boards that handle raw meat need maintenance. It's not about looks, it's about food safety. Regularly oil the surface or else animal fluids will find a way into the cutting surface and breed bacteria.
