The Craftiest Workshop

We moved onto our new property about a week before the snow began to fly in late November. I didn’t get a chance to look around to see what the previous owners had left for us. With warmer temperatures recently, I was able to sift through a pile of 1X4” boards stacked in a semi weather protected shed. Upon closer examination, I realized the boards were essentially pallet boards without the nail holes and slightly longer than a regular pallet board. The wood is spruce and the boards just needed some work to clean them up.

If you have to take apart an actual pallet to get boards, use a reciprocator saw and saw off any nails holding it together. You then tap out the nails/nail heads with a hammer and nail punch then pull them out with a crowbar. This method is so much faster and cleaner than trying to just tear the pallet apart with a crowbar

I decided to use my mouse sander to clean up the boards. This type of sander works but it takes a long time to get each board nice. I would say a good half hour spent on each board.

After my first few boards, my husband took pity on me and gave me a quick safety lesson on using the grinder. The grinder takes off the grey weathering, sap and rough spots in a quarter of the time it took the sander to do the same job.

I still needed to follow up with the sander to remove any circular grinder marks.

Here are the before and after pics of four boards.

About a year and a half ago I found these 12”x12” stencils at Bianca Amour in Edmonton. Each one has a different word combination that would be great on a pallet sign. I decided to create the signs a size that would nicely fit these stencils.

Here is the index of all the stencils I got.

Creating a square pallet sign with three boards meant that each board needed to be cut in 10.5” sections (3 boards each 3.5” wide).

I took three boards, stacked them up on the chop saw and snipped off the ends so they would have a clean edge.

Next I measured 10.5 inches and marked it with my construction triangle.

After the first cut, I just used one of the 10.5” pieces to mark the next cut.

After cutting only six boards, I had a stack of 29 useable 10.5” pieces. I did have to use sandpaper to clean up the cut edges but that only took a couple minutes.

Knowing that gluing can get messy, I laid down an old plastic Easter tablecloth on the workbench. I laid out all the pieces and put them in groups of three, matching wood grain colour or knots. At this point you have to turn each group of three over.

Run a thin line of wood glue or weldbond to the sides of the wood and squeeze them together, being diligent at wiping any glue that seeps out.

For my backing pieces this time, I decided to use these long paint sticks we acquired from Home Depot. In the past I have used a variety of long thin wood scraps we have had from other projects.

Each stick is 21” long and I chopped them into 7” pieces; two for each sign.

As long as you can get a couple nails into each board, the sign should hold together.

I use the brad nailer hooked up to the air compressor to nail the paint sticks to the boards.

As soon as I was done nailing, I turned over the signs and wiped any glue seeping through. The glue still needed to dry but the paint sticks were now securing the boards together.

I used six 54” boards to make nine 10.5” square pallet signs.

Since each board measured a width of 3.5” this meant that four boards together would equal 14”. The next group of boards I cut into 14” sections with one 10.5” piece at the end of each board.

Eight boards yielded me six 14” pallet signs and two 10.5” signs.

Note: lay the finished signs flat for the first couple days until the glue is completely dry.

I quite like the smaller sign and the stencils fit quite nicely especially when there are three words or three lines of text.

I burned the outline and middle words then painted the rest. I added a few coats of matte polycrylic to bring out the wood grain.

With all the tools I mentioned, making these pallet signs can be fairly quick and easy. I like to make a bunch at the same time to have wooden canvases pre-made for my winter projects.