We stopped to get donuts the other day and found an abandoned pallet sitting by the side of the road. While Markie went in to get tasty, sugar bombs, I grabbed a hammer and a pry bar out of the back of the rig and ripped apart the pallet to put the wood in the back of the Jeep. The de-nailing process took a little longer, but when I was done I had a nice stack of boards.
Now, the question was… what to build?
I’ve been playing around with a barrel design — basically it started as a math problem (if I make eight 45° cuts, I get a square… 45X8=360…. so if I just make enough cuts that add up to 360 I’ll eventually get a circle) and I really wanted to try to make a lampshade.
So I cut a length into 2 inch widths with a 10° angle… 18 of those and you end up with 360°. Only I wanted room for my reclaimed plastic cup shade…. so I cut 9 at 6 inches tall, and then 18 at 1/2 inch tall, leaving room for every other panel to be lampshade material.
I tied it all together with steel bands and the finished product is really rough, but I kind of wanted to see it looking like pallet wood, not a finely finished bit of carpentry. I’m sure I’ll make another with a lot of sanding and glue and woodstain, but considering I built the whole lamp, including the base, in less than 5 hours, I’m pretty happy with the outcome
And, if you’d like to take a peek into my shop, here’s a 25 minute or so “process video” showing how long it takes to make that first cut (then it goes a lot faster).