Life goes on - Summer 2021

The inner diameter of the 13 smaller pins is .44" or 11.4mm and have 4mm thick wall.

3 Likes

Oh, how nice it is with the Swedish summer.

11 Likes

I agree. You wanna join me - go for a swim? :smile:

7 Likes

Ha, we have it worse

11 Likes

Ordered a palletbuster on Amazon since, besides dead trees, pallets are my primary source of wood. I’ll see how well it works this Saturday.

1 Like

Very well. Everthing that comes in here on a pallet we take apart. Just minutes per pallet. Flatten the nails and shorten for the boiler it falls in a big plastic container europallet size. Still besides the boiler now. In a month they are stached for next winter.

3 Likes

I welded together a giant pry bar for taking apart pallets out of railroad spikes square tubing and a round bolt.
We named it jebediah lol I’ll post a picture of it when I can.

2 Likes

Hi All,
Wooden shipping pallets have for me become in the class of things like used restaurant oils; used time aged out, no-longer legal propane bottles; even used motor oils.

Once free-for-the taking. A cost to dispose of, for the generators of these once.
Then as free-thinkers, found and developed uses . . . they become valued and then become competed over.
I have seen fists fights over these now.
I have personally been “security” and “police” escorted off premises for collecting with previous permissions, junked piled wooden pallets and to be metals scrapped propane cylinders.
What changed? Someone; someone’s, set up for money to exchange hands establishing a new value for these.
Just jim-dandy fine if you are that someone, pushed up $'s first inline.
Really just all about supply and demand.
All of theses are really limited in just how much will be generated.
Once the demand exceeds that supply, then use-escalation-inflation.

Nothing new about any of this. I was escorted off from bicycled to, river fishing back in 1967 as a 14 y.o. kid once the new landowner found he could make tax-payment money selling his rock sitting places at the falls. Fishing manic adults could out bid any kid.
And hunting season public access to large blocks of big companies timber lands went bye-bye within the last 20 years here where i live. One day a year bid-apply for $$$ now.

My point related to wood gassing.
I think you are foolish to think the days of wine and roses for free, really cheap wooden shipping pallets will sustain. Just look at the fellows driving around with collected up wooden shipping pallets. I see this daily if I look. At the head of the line.
Look at the growing use of metal and plastics shipping pallets.

IF you ain’t fuels growing under ownership use control pretend it just does not exist.
Step over the freebies/gleamed stuff, and go out and sweat to have your own-made.

Hey just me. And a whole bunch of other fellows and gals.
Steve Unruh

3 Likes

Not saying your wrong necessarily I think that’s just one of those things that depend on your situation and what you have to adapt for. For example I work at Rural king and they send the pallets back to the distribution center, and if you want a nice pallet you have to pay $5 for it. However we still have a free pile of junk pallets that you can take and I have access/know about the barrel inside the back that we put wood scraps into. I think The biggest thing that kills stuff like that is liability. Most places probably wouldn’t give you the grease because it’s seen somehow as a liability. Companies don’t want you on their property unless you make them money period.

3 Likes

I’ve got 40 acres of former tree farm(we didn’t re-apply for the tax break). I’m just taking advantage of the free pallets from my workplace.

Right now as far as trees are going I’m still processing 5 huge oaks that we chopped down. Dead standing trees that would have hit the house. Still have good centers with slightly punky outsides.

Agreed Cory,
I’ve been a business manger and a business owner. We had a lot of metals generated as scrap. I would only set up selling this to ones who would prove to me the least possibility of liability. And NOT having helpers scoping out the place for an after-midnight break-in.

Now onto wood-for-power.
At the Victory gasworks shops it was 1st and formoset about small engines woodgasses for shaft power. Electrical generation.
The wood fuels to trial on came from three sources: ME - always natural raw woods; a couple of different fellows working up shipping pallets from their income works into chunks; and 300-500 pound lots of potential customers “fuels”. This last from exotic woods; crops residues; nuts shells; actual dried shits and bedding litters.

The hardest game in woodgasing is too woodgas for small engines. Period.
Most any and almost all of these diverse fuels could be done. Huge range of set-ups, and operator-hands needed to this wide range. Even pallets woods. Was kiln-cured with certified fumigants for international shipping. Was raw log made. Benn inside dryish stored. Outside, got PNW soaking wet. And then hardwoods (some from South America and SE Asia) versus pine-spruce-fir woods.

Anyhow in all times of history and places the base default becomes annual growths green “stick” woods.
Learn to do that raw woodgasing. Or as Kristijan recently showed convert raw, green stick wood form to motor grade charcoal.
Everything else is shallow, limited knowledge and capabilities so says histories.
S.U…

4 Likes

We talked about moose the other day.
Only two minutes after lightup, going to work last night at 9pm, these fellows showed up at the road side.

https://youtu.be/RfR4uWj-XU8

10 Likes

Makes my mouth water Jan! We have a small species here in Washington called a shiras moose, very small compared to most and very saught after for big game hunters. HIGHLY regulated, have to enter into drawings for a chance to hunt them and if your lucky enough to get drawn then you have to hunt with state certified guide. No guarantee you will get one and if you get drawn it’s a once in a lifetime chance you can’t get drawn again in this state. Iv only seen one myself before on the east side by Idaho

4 Likes

Almost there. Last week charcoal, this weekend a powerpack. Batt is from small forklift 24 V 200 Ah, inverter bought new 4 kVA, honda was here for some reason I forgot. Steel the same. One afternoon playing, doesn t happen often anymore. Got stuck with the place of the inverter and the tension of the alternator. Next time better. Some day , in the far far future this thing will run on woodgas.

8 Likes

Cleanup and dinnertime now.

Almost running

6 Likes

Yes. I use wooden shipping pallets too:


I use them to stack my winter fire wood for 60-100 days of air drying up off the ground.

They weaken and break down requiring me to scrounge for replacements every 3-4 years.
The covered lump pile on the lefthand is broken down pallets to be woodstoved now.
The bulk wood stove cares not about metal nails and staples.

Think about it . . . wooden pallets represent at best only ~60% of a log.
They have zero bark.
They have zero pitch pockets.
And almost no knots.
Sawmill edgings and harvested saplings growth you have all of these.
As a percentage of the volume a high amount.
So woodgasing just pure pallet wood is like only knowing how to cook with the polished white rice, fine de-germinated polished wheat.
S.U.

5 Likes

As far as it goes for charcoal I’m not picky. Until I get a better chainsaw to hack apart these trees I just use whatever I find. I’m keeping my eye out for something like what Kristijan found for his kiln and make one of those. The flame cap method doesn’t work great with firewood sized pieces at least with how I’m using it. I’m probably doing it wrong and not letting the chunks pyrolize enough.
If/when I can build a raw wood system I will be utilizing the pine that I have acres and acres of.
Going to ask my former dairy farm neighbor if he has any big tanks I can buy from him.

I have made plenty of charcoal in my drum system out of large chunks of wood. What I found was that each charge should be made up of similarly sized pieces. If you mix big and small, the big lumps get buried and smothered by the small stuff. I end up using all the off-cuts from my firewood that i just toss loose into a bin. If all you have is big pieces, you could probably tend several barrels at a time, as it does take a while for it to burn down completely.

2 Likes

Good to know. Yeah I was mixing the sizes pretty dramatically.
1by and 2by planks vesus firewood size.