Pallets - how to bust them up.

[seabert]

I can say from experience, looking at pictures of completed projects on Pinterest is far more romantic than actually dismantling the pallets in a fashion that will render the pallet wood usable for another purpose. Those twisty nails REALLY hang on! Then the boards split as you pry with a flat bar. The fire and rescue sawzall blades seem to be the best approach I've found for salvaging.

Thanks for the tip on efficiently turning the pallets into firewood FFJ! I've been carefully using an old skil saw till now. Chainsaw is far more convenient, but was afraid of the inevitable with hitting nails.

I have the "Deluxe Pallet Buster" tool. I think the tool works fine and easily pulls off very tough planks. However there needs to be enough space to get the tool between a slat to get the leverage of the cross piece. Sometimes a pallet cross piece has a cutout for fork trucks so i simply slide in a piece of wood to get the leverage. The cat paw tool was hard to find when I was looking but I thing that will fit in tighter spaced slats. The best part of the Deluxe Pallet Buster is the feet rotate so you get a solid pull on the wood and so much less splitting up of the wood. Great if you are using the wood for projects.