Scavenger Chic

Dismantling a Pallet and Maryland Flag

• By Joan
• August 19, 2018
• 5 Comments

I think everybody has their own way to dismantle a pallet and here is mine.  While I’ve probably destroyed a couple hundred pallets I have yet to take pictures of my technique because I’m always the one doing the dismantling.

Well not this time…this time my youngest is picking up the saw because he wanted to create a large Maryland Flag for his new apartment at the University of Maryland.  

I think Maryland has their own logo but they have sort of adopted the State flag of Maryland and it’s colors as their own. And because the shapes are fairly simple, they are  easy to cut from wood.

I had the perfect pallet for the project, look how pretty that wood is.  He needed 12 pieces of wood for the flag and this one had 11.  Only needed to find one more piece for the backing.

If you don’t need the  nails on the ends I find this method works great with very little waste.  Run a circular saw down both sides as close to the nails and side pieces  as possible.  Do the same on the back.  This releases the side rails.

The only nails remaining are those down the center. While you could use a hammer and  pry bar, my tool of choice is this Pallet Buster Tool . I put it on my wish list a couple years ago for Christmas and I love it.  It’s like a huge crow bar and  the pallet wood comes off in one piece without splitting.  OK, a few will split, but it definitely minimizes the waste.

The only step left is to pull out the center nails.  I like banging them on a hard surface (like brick) until they are halfway out then tugging with the hammer.

Here is the stack of free wood from this one pallet.

With a chop saw square off one end of each of the pallet planks.

Turn the wood around because you’ll be making another cut on the end of the pallet you didn’t already square off.  Find the shortest piece of pallet wood and use that piece to mark the remainder  of your wood planks making all the pallet boards the same length.

On the back, use long pieces of scrap wood to hold all your boards together.  Nathan is using builders adhesive reinforced with a nail gun.  The builders adhesive was the only thing we had to buy specifically for this project all the other supplies were leftover  paint or wood scraps.

Sand the edges and any other rough spots on your pallet wood.

Divide the pallet wood into quarters painting two opposite quarters white and two yellow.

The Maryland state flag is based off of two crests from two of Maryland’s founding families.  The yellow and black is easy to draw with the aid of a ruler but you will need to make a pattern for the red and white areas.

The above flag was cropped so just the red and white area remained then converted to black and white, which saves a little on printer ink.

That image was then imported over to Microsoft Publisher on a blank page size of 28.25″ x 18.2″, the exact size of one of the quarters.  Stretch the image to fit the full blank page size.  Print.

The new flag pattern is trimmed and taped back together.

Ran out of pallet wood that was the exact width of the original pallet so he cut strips from a piece of 1/2″ scrap plywood and sanded well.

The strips are numbered so he could figure out where they fit on the flag and painted black.

On a larger piece of plywood, he transferred the pattern  we made earlier and cut out with a table top scroll saw.  Doing this 4 times gives you all 8 pieces needed for the flag.  Sand.

Paint these cutouts red.

Only remaining step is to attach all the cut out pieces with builders adhesive and/or nails.

Didn’t he do a beautiful job?  When he moves into his new apartment I’ll be sure to update with more pictures.

Stay inspired.

Need more motivation?  I have a few more flag projects for you…

Shared at Talk of the Town, Salvaged Junk Projects,

Related posts:

Maryland Flag Shelves, or maybe it’s a Headboard Bamboo or Pallet Wood Valance – Easy diy Maryland Flag DIY Table Pallet Wood Compass Rose