Thread: Cheap (Free) Timber

Glasiers are also a good source, the glass comes in wooden crates, they need to get rid off

Well I found a local company with a stock pile of pallets they were happy for me to take. Took home 6 pallets on Saturday.

First lesson I learnt is I need to be more picky with the pallets I take home. Will see if I can take 2 of them back next Saturday and pick up a few more.

The Next lesson was how hard it was to breakdown a pallet without wrecking it. Breaking down the first pallet and cleaning the boards up took me about 4 hours. I also destroyed 4 of the boards in the break down process. By my fourth pallet I was down to about 90 mins. With breakdown and prep taking that long I really need to build a stock pile of timber. Don really want to be half way through a project and then have to breakdown a pallet to get the required timber. Now I need to find somewhere to store.

Third lesson was a jointer is a must -see also lesson 1. Every second board was bent in some way. Managed to clean some of them up on my table saw however the necessity of a jointer in this process is now well understood. I am hoping to get a jointer for Xmas. This gives me about 3 months to extend my man cave so that it will fit. Slight problem is I was hoping to use reclaimed materials (like these pallets) to extend the man cave.

The pallets I picked up were about 1.2 metre square. Ideally I need to find somewhere that uses bigger pallets. Some longer lengths would be very handy for the bigger projects.


BTW, Does anyone know what type of hardwood they usually use in pallets? I am useless at being able to work out what a timber is.

I went to visit some friends last week and the house next door was being demolished.
The house had literally been reduced to a 3m high pile of timber, bricks, tiles and plaster and was being loaded onto a large tipper.
Heaps of 4x2 and 3x2 jarrah roofing and flooring timber all going to landfill.
A small stack of about a dozen pieces of the timber at the side of the property looked like someones attempt to rescue a few pieces.

I am on freindly terms with a nearby ride on mower retailer and can pick up a trailerload of foreign sourced pine abt 90 x 40 in lengths to 2m whenever I want. Material comes in the form of top and bottom frames for shipping mowers, and the risers used to seperate them, assembled with bolts, nuts, metal brackets and stays, and some monster woodscrews. Can also get smaller sections from smaller crates that fit on top of the main ones to house the cutting deck during shipping, but they tend to be poor wood and are riddled with staples, so can be more hole than wood once you get the staples out. My supplier typically needs to clear a tilt tray tow truck load (abt 4 tonnes) every week to ten days,so taking a couple of trailer loads every so often helps him and me and the hardware is generally reusable as well, though he is collecting surplus nuts and bolts in 44gal drums now to sell to the scrappy to fund the Chrissy party. Main supply comes from Rover, MTD, and Cub Cadet mowers, also has 2mm thick angle steel frames from other brands as well.

Have a look in Kimbriki Tip which is just off Mona Vale Road. They have a massive pile of wood and you can take it out by the kilo for not much $. (What a lot of replies. Obviously a huge amount of free wood out there.)