# Does pallet wood normally shrink?



## kbry (Mar 3, 2014)

So I made my first pallet wood project about 6 weeks ago. A dog bed.

It's been in the house since it was completed and I just noticed tonight that almost all the boards have shrunk about an 1/8 of an inch. 

I wouldn't be concerned however my next project is for night stands and I don't want them to fall apart.

I'm sure there are a million variables but I'm just asking is this typical. 

Thanks.


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## Trav (May 30, 2011)

You will find this will happen with all lumber with a high moisture content. I would imagine that the pallet wood was not kiln dried. The shrinkage is do to the loss of moisture in the wood.


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## dbish3189 (Mar 4, 2014)

Last summer I put pallet wood on the walls of my theatre room. It was a wet summer last year and I didnt think anything of it when I was installing. This winter I has noticed some boards bowing. Be careful when using the wood and inspect the grain and crown. You can predict if and where the board will bow in most cases. I left a lot of my unused boards in my garage out of the elements. I have since made a side table with the straightest boards. Good luck!


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## phinds (Mar 25, 2009)

I've seen pallet wood that warps REALLY badly after being un-nailed from the pallet, so I'm guessing that some pallet wood is unseasoned. You should check the moisture content of any suspect wood before you use it.


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## kbry (Mar 3, 2014)

Right,I get that. I just figured that most pallets had plenty of time to dry. Obviously I dont know how old they were.

Probably a dumb question in the first place, but I dont have that much experience with pallets and wondered if that was the norm.


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## kbry (Mar 3, 2014)

I really like the wall. That's awesome. I dont have a ton of experience looking at wood to determine if it will bow but I will research that. 

I have seen one of those moisture things mentioned in several posts but I have never given much thought to them but I guess if I'm going to be making furniture then I need to definitely need to consider it. 

Thanks everyone.


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## dbish3189 (Mar 4, 2014)

If the would has a slight curve in it and has been in the weather, it will be exaggerated when it moves to a dryer area. I learned the hard way. Stay to the straightest and flattest pieces and stack the lumber neatly if you are storing it. I love pallet wood and the possibles. Especially getting cool wood for free most of the time.


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## w1pers (Nov 27, 2013)

The wall looks great. I can see a few spots that really warped. The table looks good too. Got any better photos of the table? I am planning on making a couple end tables and am curious on how you put yours together.


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## tonyuno (Jan 5, 2013)

What wood are we talking about here. Iv'e had new Pine shrink but most seasoned pallets are usually very stable and in 16 years never had a shrinkage problem.


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## kbry (Mar 3, 2014)

tonycan said:


> What wood are we talking about here. Iv'e had new Pine shrink but most seasoned pallets are usually very stable and in 16 years never had a shrinkage problem.


I'm not real sure. I'm guessing either pine or hickory. Unfortunately I can only identify very few types of wood.


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## Brian T. (Dec 19, 2012)

COFI SPF pallet woods here are kiln dried to 24%MC You betcha they will shrink to air dried 
(12-14% MC or lower). Yeah, yeah, seasoned pallets? They should live so long. Not here.

I toss them out into the back yard and find them in spring when the snow melts. Never considered them as wood worth the effort to make something nice. I get maybe 5/winter, each under 2,000lb of wood pellets for my home heating stove.
But if you can, knock them apart, stack and sticker the wood for a year and try again. At -20, they can sit where they are.


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## tonyuno (Jan 5, 2013)

Robson Valley said:


> COFI SPF pallet woods here are kiln dried to 24%MC You betcha they will shrink to air dried (12-14% MC or lower). Yeah, yeah, seasoned pallets? They should live so long. Not here. I toss them out into the back yard and find them in spring when the snow melts. Never considered them as wood worth the effort to make something nice. I get maybe 5/winter, each under 2,000lb of wood pellets for my home heating stove. But if you can, knock them apart, stack and sticker the wood for a year and try again. At -20, they can sit where they are.


Really? How interesting.


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## HowardAcheson (Nov 25, 2011)

Pallets are made from green wood so they will certainly shrink when brought into a dry space. Also, pallets are assembled using twist nails in many cases. These are almost imposible to remove when the wood shrinks around them and/or they rust.

If you are going to use pallet wood, you need to understand the negatives. At the very least, you must stack and sticker them and give them 6 to 12 months to dry and stabilize.


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## tonyuno (Jan 5, 2013)

W1pers. 
Is the pallet buster meeting expectations and have you tried the pick axe yet?


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## Brian T. (Dec 19, 2012)

I live less than 200 miles from a major source of SPF pallets. 
( = might be Spruce, might be Pine, might be Fir)

The wood was kiln-dried to 24% but that's a very long way from airdried.
Not much time for seasoning between here and there! I had a stack of them in my wood loft and finally got around to chopping them up for rough garden/outdoor work tables. 4? yrs old? Nice enough to work with but I had no concern about geometry or appearance. The wasps keep chewing off the gray weathered surface. Might be a year for painting with 5W30 motor oil.

We have 18,000,000 ha standing dead pine from the Mountain Pine Beetle epidemic of the past 15 years. It is seasoned = summer, fall, winter & spring. So dead, so dry, so cracked as to be useless for much other than wood stove pellets.


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## Camden (Oct 22, 2013)

You gotta figure, even if a pallet was made of kiln dried lumber(which they're not), pallets are outside in the elements 90% of they're miserable little lives. This means that when you get them, there is no telling what the moisture content is(unless you check), or what kind of stresses the wood has undergone. I use loads of pallet wood, but I try to acclimate it to my shop for 6 months or more before even planing it. There's no point in processing a board that is just going to cup into a ribbon. Treat it like you would any other raw, rough sawn or found lumber. Acclimate, evaluate then decide what to do with what. If you need something fast, I find the cull lumber at HD usually has a decent amount of flawed "white wood", which is analogous to lots of pallet wood. Use that whilst "seasoning" your salvage. Good luck!

WCT


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## tonyuno (Jan 5, 2013)

I live on the a Gulf Island, lots of pallets in the Harbor city of Nanaimo, less and less hardwood pallets available but lots of Pine etc. The Pine I rarely bother with as its cheaper to pick up finished lumber at the local yard, at three or four cords of burning a year its easier to cut down some of my trees and season them than pallet cutting. Drove from the border to the Yukon and the beetle kill is terrible and in a dry summer a major wild fire in the waiting, according to 1pers Colorado has the same problem.


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## Brian T. (Dec 19, 2012)

Sorry Camden but you're incorrect. Maybe in Ky, but SPF is all KD here.
AAC (Annual Allowable Cuts) in BC are measured in the millions of cubic meters.
Look it up.
There are 2 licenced tonewood prospectors in my village. 
National, Martin, Yamaha and others come here for wood.
Because of the select nature of the wood, the AAC is usually 2,000 m^3.
Kind of exciting to see the Mitchell(?) Sky Cranes fly in to lift the log billets out, one at a time.
Come and Heliski. Not more than $1,200/day


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## Midlandbob (Sep 5, 2011)

Pallet wood is still just wood.
All wood takes on and loses moisture according to the humidity.
Most outside air dried wood( not sitting wet) will be about 10-14% moisture content. This will air dry to 6-8% in 2-3 months in the winter home humidity of 40% or so.
If you air dry 1 inch hardwood over the summer under cover it will be 12% or so in Ontario so also most of the northern states. If brought into the heated building it will dry in a few months to working levels. Ensuring gentle air flow and normal stickering is vital.
If you take it back outside, to the garage say, it will go back to 10-14% in another few months. 
The main drying time is taking the wood from wet /green ( wood can hold a lot of water that is unbound) to 12% /air dried. The rest of the way is easy.
You can find charts of humidity vs moisture content for wood that is at equilibrium.
In a heated shop the wood should dry in a few months in the heating months and a bit longer if air conditioned/dehumidified.


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## w1pers (Nov 27, 2013)

tonycan said:


> W1pers.
> Is the pallet buster meeting expectations and have you tried the pick axe yet?


Thanks for asking Tony. Yea pallet buster works pretty well. Certainly as good as Izzy's contraption and it doesn't disintegrate after use like Izzy's does but I have found that, how well it works depends on the wood I am using it on. Some split like crazy. Better to cut the ends off on those and use the PB on the middle. Just took apart a large pallet made of some kind of bleached white wood (had some on a different thread ID it as birch) and it worked great. Tried your pick axe method and it worked pretty well but I think I will stick with my PB for most of my pallets. I am now convinced that there is not any one perfect tool or method. Do what works best for you. The videos on youtube make the tools and methods they are using look like the are the perfect answer but seldom work that good in real life.


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