Hi Palleton,

That’s a good question as we have plenty of resources to start with. But let see what’s really important before starting any pallet projects, I’ll put links to articles we’ve written to cover this:

1. First, you have to check if your wood pallets are safe for reuse or not. This is something you can check with the stamp available on every pallet. We have covered this topic in our article: Is my pallet safe for reuse?
2. If your pallet is safe for reuse, maybe you want to dismantle it to use the planks for your project? Check out the best ways to dismantle a wood pallet!
3. Check if you have all the essential tools to start working with pallets and go forward with your project.
4. If you want to paint your pallet at the end, check out these 17 tips you need to know before painting a wooden pallet.
5. Need to fix pallet planks together? You can use glue and you can check the type of glue needed for woodworking, or you can join them together with wood joints, check out the common types of wood joints you should know.
6. Maybe you need some plans to start your project? Check out our free PDF plans or the best sources for free woodworking plans.

Here you go, you now have plenty of resources to start your wood pallet project, then do not hesitate to browse our crafter pallet ideas to be inspired! Then start, try and try again until you are happy with what you’ve done! Wood pallets are a free resource, so do not hesitate to experiment! 🙂

You will quickly realize that wood pallets can be found everywhere, or even that it will take a lot of courage to resist the urge to stop in front of each pallet you cross 🙂

Companies or businesses:

To find free pallets and given their uses, it makes sense to look for them on the side of companies that have material delivered, the pallets are often kept outside, in this case, feel free to enter and ask if you can take some of them, some companies are even happy that you get rid of them, in this case it’s the jackpot…

Stores:

Think of printing shops, household appliances or furniture stores, for example. Small stores often try to give them away because it clogs their delivery areas and forces them to call professionals to clear them. The best thing is to come by in the evening just before closing time.

Construction sites:

The building sites have the material delivered by pallets (tiles, cinder blocks, cement…). While large construction sites are interesting “spots”, smaller construction sites such as houses under construction are often more accessible. You will certainly find some pallets waiting for you. (It will, however, be necessary to be a little bold to go see a stranger and ask him for his pallets!).

Waste disposal center:

Go for a walk in your waste collection center, you will certainly come across a few wooden pallets, but the hardest part will be to be able to leave with them. Indeed, it is common to find pallets in waste collection centers, but it is forbidden to recover them! The contents of the tippers and containers of a waste collection center belong to the community that owns the site or to the management company.

In the street:

Even simpler, but rarer, take advantage of the days of bulky pickup to go around your neighborhood, with a little luck you may come across a pallet waiting for you at the end of a street.

Another idea:

You too have your own veins, don’t hesitate to share them 🙂

More resources available here: Where to get wood pallets?

The Butt Joint is probably the easiest woodworking joint and the one used the most by non-pro crafters, it’s a wood joint for rough or rustic work.

It joins two pieces of wood by merely butting them together, either perpendicularly, such as with a picture frame, or along the same plane, as when we bond several boards side-by-side to make a larger piece of wood. The butt joint is the simplest joint to make but it isn’t automatically a stable or strong joint, mainly if you rely on glue alone to hold the pieces of wood together, because the orientations of the pieces, you have an end grain to long grain gluing surface. The resulting wood joint is inherently weak because the glue does not provide much lateral strength. It would be easy to push the ends and separate the wood joint. So what can we do to make it stronger?

The most common ways to strengthen this type of wood joint are the following:

1. Fasteners: nails, screws, and even metal brackets can be used to strengthen the joint.
2. Glue added along with your fastener of choice.
3. Dowels – drill holes and glue/insert wooden plugs.
4. Biscuits – eye-shaped thin pieces of wood that are attached by using a biscuit joiner tool that will cut a half-moon shaped groove in the two boards to be joined. The biscuit is put in after gluing the grooves, and the wood joint is clamped. Biscuits are especially good with plywood and other manufactured pieces and provide a lot of gluing surface in a small amount of space.
5. Pocket joinery – such as Kreg joinery tools where holes are pre-drilled to toe-nail fasteners in. This is stronger than just screwing into the end grain, and the advantage is that it can be hidden. Pocket joinery is pretty fast and secure, but you have to have special tools to do it correctly.

If you need more information on woodworking joints, check out this article describing all the common wood joints.