Label Sheet-Good Offcuts
Writing dimensions, thickness and material on plywood and melamine offcuts at the saw, so the storage rack can be read instead of unpacked.
Drive a Scissor Jack With an Impact Driver to Break Pallets Apart
Pallets are nailed with ring-shank nails that resist straight pulling. A car scissor jack opens with enough force to walk the boards off the stringers, and an impact driver on the jack's screw does in seconds what the folding handle does in a minute.
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The Problem
Pallet boards are fastened with ring-shank nails, which have raised rings along the shank that bite into the wood fibres and resist withdrawal. Prying a board straight up usually splits it before the nails let go, which defeats the point if you wanted the wood.
A pry bar also works at whatever angle you can get it in at, so the force goes partly into levering and partly into twisting the board. What breaks a pallet apart cleanly is slow, straight, parallel pressure between the deck board and the stringer underneath it.
The Technique
A car scissor jack applies exactly that, and it fits in the gap between boards.
- Stand the pallet on edge or lay it deck-down so you can reach the gap between a deck board and the stringer it's nailed to.
- Seat the scissor jack in the gap, with the pads bearing on the stringer below and the deck board above.
- Fit a socket on your impact driver to match the jack's drive screw — the same square or hex the folding handle hooks into. A nut driver of the right size slides over it too.
- Run the jack open with the driver. The board walks off the nails a fraction at a time, staying flat and staying whole.
- Back the jack off, move to the next board, repeat.
The nails come through with the board and pull out or cut off afterwards.
Pro tip: The driver-on-the-jack trick isn't specific to pallets. Any scissor jack opens and closes faster this way, including the one in the boot of a car — worth knowing before you're kneeling on a hard shoulder cranking a folding handle in the dark.
Safety note: A scissor jack is designed for straight compression. Loaded at an angle it can skid out of the gap under full pressure, so seat it square, keep hands away from the closing side, and don't run it past the point where the pads start to tilt. Never use a jack you also rely on for lifting a vehicle after it has been abused this way — check the screw and pads before it goes back in the car.
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