Pallet End Table (Part II)

(Continued from Part I)

The first order of business was to attempt to detach the top and bottom boards from the center studs. Like I said, the boards were cracked and hundreds of nails that held the pieces firmly together. A short experiment with a pry bar showed that I was not going to recover the pieces intact if I tried to force them apart.

I sacrificed a little board length by removing the ends of the slats with a jigsaw but it did get rid of the problem of dealing with about two-thirds of the nails. The top and bottom boards were then only connected to the middle runner. Although there were a lot of them the nails eventually broke under repeated gentle twisting of the wood.

One pallet was now disassembled but most of the boards still obviously had chunks of nail in them that would have to be removed. I don't sweat the obvious ones... It's the hidden power-tool-destroying ones that concern me.

A while back a friend of mine bought me a Wizard III metal detecting wand for my shop. I don't know what he paid for it but this thing is very very sensitive and is worth its weight in golden planer blades. It can be a little tricky to set but once you get a method down it finds the little metal "surprises" buried deep in the wood really well.

My method for using this tool is to:

1. Get a nail
2. Lay it on a known metal-free surface
3. Tune the sensitivity of the metal detector to find it even when waving it very fast over the area
4. Slowly scan both sides of the board
5. And, then, (this is critical, now) try to find the test nail again. Call me paranoid, but the last thing you want is to bump the sensitivity knob or have the battery die while scanning a bunch of boards and not know it until your planer blades suddenly and noisily try to leap up through the tool housing.

After I found and removed the last of the nails I glued and clamped several of the boards that had cracked due to my manhandling of them. The glue dried for 24 hours and set up real nice.

Smoothing the wood was done with a 12" DeWalt "portable" planer. "Portable" is in quotes here because it is heavy as hell. I mean, technically, anything is portable if you have the lift capacity. But I'm nit-picking here. It is the highest quality tool I have in my arsenal, it has great documentation, and has so far worked flawlessly. I just wish it didn't terrify my one-year-old when I use it.

For some reason he gets visibly upset if he hears it running way out in the garage. Maybe it gives off some upper frequency harmonics that adults can't hear or something but whatever it is he is clearly bothered by it. We tried to alay his fear of it once by letting him watch daddy use it so he would see there was nothing to worry about. So it was me in the garage, he and the wife way out in the driveway where it wouldn't be too loud.

He wigged out as soon as I fed the first piece in. I mean, he completely lost it. Tears and blubbery lip and the whole nine yards. So now we have taken his mild fear of an unknown noise out in the garage and transformed it into a bright yellow nightmare.

Super. Great parenting. Well done.

Needless to say, the rest of the planing needed to be done in the short windows of opportunity while he and mommy went to the store or after I got home from work but before he got home from daycare or similar. It's pretty even now - at least the warpage has been removed. The rest of the smoothing can probably be done with a sander.
(To be continued...)