Thread: My Paling Failing - ½km of palings?

You do have a way of phrasing things, now enough of those (s) and get into it

At the close of play yesterday I had dressed and thicknessed all the remaining faces (which was probably 40% of the total palings), and the count is 412 in total (I rejected a dozen or so for being too thin, too propellered, too cupped).

It's actually not possible to joint the faces flat because they are so thin and flexible to start with. Ages ago I got sick of tapering them either in length or across the width, and so now I just skip plane them through the thicky, which is much safer with such thin material that is also very brittle from weathering - and they're flexible enough to adapt to a final shape when building (hopefully straight) anyway. The edges are ok for jointing though.

Only a short day on the job today due to other commitments, but almost all have now got an edge jointed, and that will be finished in 30 minutes tomorrow, ready for edge thicknessing to the width brackets of every 5mm (so 80, 85, 90 etc). Some are quite wide at 125mmand some are even more at 160mm or so. One is even 200mm.

They are tricky things to edge thickness because they are so thin: 10-14mm with a very occasional one being 15mm after face dressing. The most common is 12mm. The risk of them falling over going through the thicky is high, so I have been clamping a bunch together (say 8) and running them through. This is actually fairly slow and I suspect that putting them through the table saw may be quicker, but doesn't leave as nice an edge.



O'course there is no such thing as "free" timber, as we all know, and palings are quite a lot of work indeed, but the character of the timber is extraordinary! It gets me every time. "The Prize lies beneath - hidden in full view!". It's so true - all of them are dull, grey, maybe mouldy or otherwise. What comes out of the other end of the thicky is a blast! That in-between zone before you hit "new" timber is fantastic for character, and can't be had from previously unused timber.

This time I left some occasional grey parts in the faces, and this can look really good - kinda like its own Milk Paint finish in parts. I also like that reminder of what it was before dressing. Some of the grain patterns/colours, and the sheen of the timber is as good or better than we would hope to get in proper purchased timber. One just has to be satisfied with either thin timber or laminating a number together to make thicker boards - two together makes an exceptionally strong board (I used some for a deck a couple of years ago).

That's some beautiful wood you got there... Lucky for you - Industrialization and Efficiency has not hit you there Down Under like it has here.... I can totally appreciate making furniture out of that sort of reclaimed fencing...

Here in The Colonies - all we can get is pressure treated pine fence palings unless we cut them ourselves... And on those - there is no treasure underneath - The weathered greyish green Arsenic chemical wood mush exterior only yields slightly fresher and less crumbly green Arsenic chemical mush wood inside.... No love for me....

Well it's a start and that could sometimes be the biggest hurdle.

Brett would have spend 10 hours cleaning after an hour of work

Originally Posted by truckjohn

Industrialization and Efficiency has not hit you there Down Under like it has here....
Here in The Colonies - all we can get is pressure treated pine fence palings unless we cut them ourselves... And on those - there is no treasure underneath - The weathered greyish green Arsenic chemical wood mush exterior only yields slightly fresher and less crumbly green Arsenic chemical mush wood inside.... No love for me....

Well we do have that too TJ, and it is the grey painted fence in the background of pic 2. It is by far the most common fencing done here now. I think we can still get hardwood fence palings though but the glory days are gone.

An example of the type of boxes I want to make: this is a Fruit & Vege box I made for my son a while back.

Vege Box 2a.JPG .... Vege Box 2b.JPG

The base is some 6mm ply I had hanging around (happens to be Marine Ply). Next time I'll be using Lube finish screws which are brown and should disappear on at least some of the timbers.

This is the deck outside the back door which is two palings laminated together and then thicknessed to a finished size 22mm.

Back Deck.JPG .... Deck 1.JPG

deleted - duplicate

Hi FF

Recently a friend made some self-stacking boxes like yours but with one minor variance - he used triangular corner posts, which a a little kinder on the contents, and people notice them !

Presume your box bottoms fit into slots in the bottom rail?



Cheers

Graeme

Or you could always use box pin joints....

Originally Posted by Pat

Brett would have spend 10 hours cleaning after an hour of work

It'd probably be more like 5 hours, if one doesn't include the refreshment(s)(s)(s) break(s)(s)(s).

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

Recently a friend made some self-stacking boxes like yours but with one minor variance - he used triangular corner posts, which a a little kinder on the contents, and people notice them !

Presume your box bottoms fit into slots in the bottom rail?

That triangle is a VERY good idea Graeme - thanks! No that box didn't stack into another (they just have two side by side in an Ikea monstrosity*) but I'm yet to design the next lot, and that is something that I wanted to incorporate. The way that one is set up you could have the feet say 15mm past the bottom rail, which would give projecting feet of 9mm if the base was 6mm ply. If the corner piece was then 6mm from the top then there would be 3mm clearance between the top and bottom rail of the stacked boxes. Noice!


*The Ikea monstrosity is some kind of Frankensteinian bookshelf,display shelf bloody thing. Yesterday I ran my hand over it to check the finish (as we are prone to do if we are also prone to sanding up to 3-4000 grit on our own projects).

I kid you not a whisper - the surface of the "dressed" Pine was like 40 grit abrasive!!! Maybe even 24 grit - unbelievable! If you fell against it, say after too many refreshment(s)(s)(s) you would remove several layers of skin, and draw blood - and that is no exaggeration. There were two things I couldn't believe - that it would get out of a factory like that.....even a Chinese factory of the worst standard.....and that someone would actually buy it....and he's my blood!!

Well FF you certainly have found some treasure under the oxidation.!!

A big congratulations on all your recycling efforts!!

Stumps today saw everything thicknessed, edge jointed, and width thicknessed (except for a couple of odd sizes, which is only 20 or so palings). Ready to sort back into lengths, bundle wrap, and file back in the bottom shed. The shorties (which are no longer curly) will be the first to be used in some box prototypes.