Make a Pallet Wood Creel or Overhead Drying Rack for Clothes, Herbs and Flowers

Cheap and cheerful engineering in the practical use of recycled, untreated pallet and fruit crate wood to make a pulley creel/dryer.

I had two main reasons for making this drying rack, firstly because our teatowels were getting singed on the woodburner and secondly we had a huge crop of chillies to dry and store.

However, this rack, which in the Winter we use to dry clothes, could be made at least twice the size and give ample room to dry all your washing. I decided to go the whole hog and fabricate the pulleys. It was not as hard to make them as I had supposed. Even if you are just starting out in woodworking I think you will find that you will be able to make them quite easily by just following the steps set out below.

If you decide, as I did,  to cut the clothes rails down from pallet wood planks, then I would recommend using a circular saw. Alternatively you could buy three broom stales or wooden dowels (the former I could get here for 1 Euro each) but I enjoy the challenge of making everything from recycled wood! 

You will also need a set of hole saws to make the different components of the pulleys, these are inexpensive and usually easy to find as they are commonly used to cut large diameter holes for electrical installations. They are also a good investment as they provide a cheap alternative to buying expensive, large size wood drill bits. You often find them included in drill sets. My set of seven hole saws was included in a set of drills and the  collection cost 12 Euros.

Step One - Making the Pulley Wheels & Housing with some tips on sourcing fruit crate wood

 

I chose a specific fruit crate wood, which is 3 ply, these are quite common and are usually for transporting oranges and other heavier fruit and vegetables. The side and end pieces are wide enough to be very useful in all kinds of projects. Keep a good look out for these particularly now in the marmalade orange season!

Robust 3 ply fruit crate wood, or in this case a potato box.

Cutting out the basic pulley components

 

From a pallet wood plank cut 3 discs at 50 mm diameter.

From a fruit crate (orange box) cut 5 discs at 60 mm diameter. 

 Drill out central hole to dowel diameter.

Assembling the pulley components

You will be making two pulleys, one single and one double. The double pulley maintains the separation of the cord attached to each end of the rack and combined with the single pulley enables the free running of the cord.

Starting with the single pulley, glue both faces of the smaller pallet wood wheel and attach to the faces of the larger fruit crate wheels. To ensure correct alignment of the central hole, insert the dowel shaft prior to clamping (do not glue this).

Clamp and leave to dry as per Manufacturer's instructions for the glue you are using.

 Repeat for the double pulley.

Making the pulley housing

Each pulley housing comprises a base and two sides. They are made from pallet wood and I shaped the ends to make them more aesthetically pleasing but there is no need to do this.

Cut 4 sides and cut 2 bases. The base should be slightly wider than the pulley. Drill hole for dowel and having marked base thickness on sides, drill clearance holes for screws.

 
Glue and

screw

Prior to screwing the second side, fit the pulley on its shaft into the housing to ensure shaft alignment

Step Two - Making the Rack. Cutting out the basic components

 




I used a coat hanger as a pattern for the end plates of my rack.






 




Cut two end plates from a pallet wood plank.







Cut the square section rails from pallet wood.  Each end should be shaped to fit the holes you will drill in the end plates. I used a penknife to shape the rail ends.

 

 

Step Three - Assembly

Glue and if you want to, though not necessary, clamp.

Mount pulleys to ceiling joists, sit back and watch it on film.

If you have enjoyed this article and found it interesting then share it with your friends on social media or suchlike. Please also feel free to ask questions and or make comments and if you found this helpful and would like to support this site you can always =$3.

Until next time and from a sunny day in Normandie,

Cheers, Andy
© Andy Colley 2014
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Where & How to Collect Pallets - Identifying untreated wood, safety and good housekeeping

Pallets - The Low-down - Where, What and How?

So you've been round to your local big chain supermarket and they've told you all their pallets are reused. Well this maybe true for them but not for all pallets. In Europe consigned/reusable pallets are painted a specific colour, which designates the company who owns them. Funnily enough sometimes bits of these blue and red pallets actually turn up on building sites in scrap wood but they are the least useful of all the pallets and I would never use them. What you are looking for are the unpainted untreated pallets.

The pallet shown above is a very unusual one in that it is an 'in-house' pallet made of untreated wood for the specific purpose of transporting a display stand for an exhibition. It was put out for me after use.

BE PREPARED Any time we are out in our car I carry what I call my pallet finder's kit:

ropes

quality work gloves
 

wrecking bar

wood saw

steel toe capped work boots

a hard hat (for entering building sites)

and a red flag!

That way I'm ready for a maximum pallet haul!

For a specific job you may also require thicker or longer timber so you should have a whole range of pallet providers in your recuperating itinerary. Pallet collecting is logical. Firms which transport/manufacture/sell large and heavy items have substantial pallets. So a few of the companies I collect from, for example, are swimming pool manufacturers, exhibition stand makers and a double glazing and joinery firm. All these are small family type businesses. I know the people who own them and/or the foreman. I didn't start out knowing them I just saw the pallets and went in and asked.

The upright from a plant transporter pallet.

Using five of these uprights I created the sides of the greenhouse frame below.

This is one of my first major pallet wood projects and you can find the link to the written article and film: The Five Euro Greenhouse, which shows the detailed construction at end of this post.

After I had made the above greenhouse, I then went on to design and make another but this time combining recuperated glass windows with the pallet wood frame, again there is a link at the end of this post.

Let Companies Know What You Are Doing With Their Pallets

I always make a point of telling the providers why I want the pallets and I ask for their e-mail addresses to send pictures of the finished item. I also give out  links to my youtube site so they can see the films. That way my pallet donors get feedback on the transformation of an eyesore and nuisance which was hanging around their parking lot. There is another side to this too, many of these businesses are only too glad to find I am recycling this resource. As intelligent, thinking people, they are only too aware that their waste is ending up in landfill and/or is being burnt in open fields and they are, to say the least, not very comfortable with this idea. So in repurposing and reusing pallets you are, helping yourself, helping others and helping in the long-term to conserve the planet. Often company personnel will see you entering their premises and bring out pallets fresh from the warehouse, on rainy days this can be very welcome!

Cracking the pallet codes

Understanding pallet 'seals' is an important factor and something you need to mug-up on before you set out on your first collecting trip. There are many sites including Wikipedia, which will explain these but I'm posting this here to give you an example of what you are looking for.

This 'seal' will be located on one of the pallet blocks:

The 'wheat stamp' denotes IPPC compliance, confirming the pallet to be made of de-barked wood. Useful if you were unsure whether the wood was real!

DK -  the country code i.e. in this case Denmark.

8C - the pallet manufacturer.

S5 - the treatment company.

HT - Heat Treated = Gravy!

All wooden crates and pallets in 74 countries of the world have an International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) seal on them. These denote several things but the most important are the bottom two letters - you are looking for pallets with no chemical treatment. In the US fumigation with methyl bromide, coded MB, is more common than in Europe, where heat treatment (HT) is the norm. However, treated pallets do occur in Europe even though you will find several sites informing you they don't! In the case of chemical treatment you will also see the resultant discolouration. Many garden centre suppliers, for example, dip items or conveyor spray them and their carrier pallets simultaneously and you will see immediate evidence of this in the blue-green 'dye' infusing the whole pallet.

Here's something we haven't seen before on pallets but is very welcome. It's the eco label for managed and sustainable forestry. Read all about it here: http://www.sacert.org/woodmark/pefc

Happy Hunting!

All the best and thanks for dropping by and if you enjoyed this post, please feel free to share, ask questions or comment.
Cheers, Andy

© Andy Colley 2014

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A Few Guidelines for Collecting Pallets

After reading some of the comments on my videos and Flickr, I thought it might be helpful if I shared my five rules to make it easier for you to obtain the basic materials for these or any other projects you may have in hand.

Five Simple Rules

  

My first big pallet project was also a gift - a Birthday Present!

Firstly, and most importantly, I only ever take pallets which are of untreated wood - any signs of discolouration due to paint or chemical treatment render them unsuitable.

Secondly, I always ask if I may have the pallets - this obviously is when the pallet is on the premises of an enterprise or site.

Thirdly, if you do take pallets from a site - leave the area better than you found it. Apart from being courteous, you may want to come back for more and should leave the impression that recyclers  ought to be welcomed. More often than not, after your first couple of visits, the proprietor or foreman will tell you to take the pallets without needing to ask. In my experience, from then on the company will often start saving and putting out pallets specifically for you.

Fourthly, safety - wear thick gloves, as pallet wood is sawn and splinters are a pain. Often pallets are discarded because they are broken (by mishandling with forktruck forks or rough handling) this may expose nail points and sharp pieces of broken timber to unprotected pinkies. Also watch out for mis-nailed pieces, where the staples or nails have not been driven straight into the wood and the points stick out from the pallet sides. Building and construction sites are often great for heavy duty untreated pallet wood, it may be well worth investing a couple of euros/dollars/pounds etc., to get yourself equipped with a hard hat, often required for access to a site.

Fifthly, transport - it goes without saying that to bring your booty home ensure that your pallets are properly loaded into or onto your car or trailer and that the properly secured load can not affect you or other road users.

Recycled window and pallet wood window box.

Remember, you are often doing these businesses a favour in taking away rubbish from their forecourt or carparks. Many realise this is so and welcome your visit. With the recuperated windows and doors used in our house and in the construction of the large Greenhouse, the source was a joinery firm - now specialising in replacement double glazing. The Enlightened Proprietor welcomed us with opened arms, as people willing to give a second life to perfectly sound single and double glazed units, which would otherwise have been burned!

Our Poultry are obsessed with DIY and FOOD!

Here is an example of a reasonably easy but professional looking project for reusing pallet wood.

There are also further details on this design and more information within this blog: http://thegreenlever.blogspot.fr/2011/11/is-for-apple-house-diy-green-gifts.html

All the best and thanks for dropping by.

Cheers, Andy

© Andy Colley 2014

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Why The Green Lever? Leaving Town for a simpler, better life in the Country.

“Give me a lever long enough…and I will move the World” was Archimedes’ claim. He was writing of mechanics but in this blog I will be pursuing the reality of moving or changing two worlds, our own individual milieu and by knock-on effect, that of the Planet. Perhaps the thing people fear the most is change but we have arrived at a point of mass consumerism that makes change inevitable and so we either take control now and direct it, or just let it happen and become a victim. Green Lever is also a play on words because it explains what we did with our own lives. Simply put, we left and became more green. Yes, we were low consumers of the Earth’s resources and we were eating organic food but we never felt we were doing enough to help the Planet. Green Lever too because it was a new adventure and we didn’t quite know how well it would work out.

Going backwards to go forwards and not being ground down

The overall effect of  taking control of your consumption of resources such as energy water and food and then going even further and starting to provide them for yourself, is to free yourself from the consequences of inevitable incremental or catastrophic collapse. That was our thinking. Some friends and relatives put it another way, they believed we were mad, leaving jobs, wasting the years we spent in education to go playing peasants in a derelict 18th Century longère in a country, where only one of us spoke the language.

Over the past ten years, living in a rural backwater with a 1000 m² of garden we have had both opportunity and time to experiment with reducing our consumption. Concurrently we have expanded our knowledge of and practical skills in, smallholding, growing and storing food, alternative medicines, animal husbandry and ecological building materials and techniques. I have used my knowledge of engineering in a practical way and have gained another language. In fact neither of us have ever used our education and skills to such an extent as in these past few years.

Living off the Land – Waste not want not

The best 1000 Euros we ever spent!

The amazing paradox of present-day society is, that without the legacy of decades of mass consumption, we recyclers, upcyclers and back-to-the-land homesteaders  would not have the basic materials with which we work. Wherever you live you will have access to resources, these may be local, natural building materials such as earth, clay, stone and straw or man-made detritus such as tyres, pallets, discarded windows and doors. When thinking about energy, you should look at the best use of available resources. We chose to heat with wood originally because there was plenty of wood available. Over the years we stopped buying wood, firstly because we didn’t like killing trees and secondly because we found a major source of free wood, which was either being burned in bonfires or going into landfill. Over these next weeks I want to visit and film some of my friends homes where they have chosen different forms of energy production, these will include, heat exchangers, solar, wind, vegetable oil generators, geothermal and woodchip.

However, let’s start with just one of  them. We heat our home and water with it, cook with it and use it to build a myriad of things for our home and garden.

The Ubiquitous Pallet 



A film showing how to dismantle a pallet to maximize the recuperation of usable construction wood. Including the tools you will need and three separate pallet 'scenarios'.  

Thanks for dropping by and feel free to share this article, comment, ask questions and relate your own experiences. Hope to see you next time.

Cheers, Andy

© Andy Colley 2014

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