BAM!!!
Mr. Tarrou.
In this lesson we are going to do a little bit of hands on Geometry.
Not our normal math lessons.
The wife got on Pinterest and she saw some pictures of these ladies taking a simple hammer
and a crow bar and pulling apart these pallets and making some Christmas trees.
She thought wouldn't that be neat if everyone along for a couple of blocks in our neighborhood
could have their own Christmas tree made out of recycled pallets.
Then we could all decorate them, have a gathering.
I thought how hard could it be, in the famous line from Top Gear which is one of my favorite
shows.
Yeah, you get these old pallets and you know... some of these I have found recycled that were
made out of pine.
Sure those broke down pretty easily.
But you get some good heavy ones that are made out of Oak, you are not going to pry
those apart.
So we are going to show you the Tarrou way of recycling pallets into Christmas trees.
Now to complete this project you are going to want a pencil, some safety goggles for
when you are cutting.
You are going to need a drill, some screws and nails.
You will need a hammer and a crow bar to clean up those loose nails when you are done cutting
apart these pallets.
Of course you are going to need something to cut with, some drill bits, and a straight
edge to mark off your trees.
Now, this process that we are going to go through is going to give us two pallet trees
out of one pallet.
We are going to start with taking the pallet and laying it bottom side up and cut the wood
out from in between these supports...
the outside support and the inside.
Now this one has two, the previous one I showed you had only one support in the middle.
That is no big deal.
You are just going to get two trees that are differently shaped but still, actually you
are going to get a really strong tree out of the one that we make from the middle of
this pallet.
Now, you might have noticed in that previous clip as I was cutting the back boards off
occasional the saw wanted to bind up a little bit and it might kick back.
It depends on how tight the nails are in these boards and how strong the wood is.
So make sure that you have a good handle on that saw as you are cutting because you don't
want loose a finger or something worse as you are tying to make some recycled pallet
trees.
Now we have our straight edge, we have a pencil, and let's mark off our tree.
Of course we want to go diagonally right.
Trees get skinnier as they go to the top.
So we are going to put our straight edge at the bottom of the pallet just on the inside
of the support beam and I don't want to go right to other edge of the support beam because
I want to cut the corner of these branches at an angle.
So I am going to open this up a little bit and sort of on the bottom of the branch use
this board as the marker.
Then come in a couple of inches and make another mark that I am going to use to guide me as
I cut my branches out.
So again on the bottom right against our straight edge.
On the top of the branch come in a couple of inches so you can cut a little bit of an
angle.
Now with my guide marks on my boards, I am just going to put my safety goggles back on,
get my saw, and cut along these...
connect the dots and in a second we will have a Christmas tree.
There is your Christmas tree.
Now let me get this out of the way.
With the way I showed you, now what you can do is you can take these two outside halves,
turn them over.
Now is the time to get your screw gun and put these two halves together and there is
your second tree.
Ok.
So now with our drill in hand we are going to go ahead and pre-drill a couple of holes
in part of this pallet.
And I realized double checking my video that, just because I am recording this and got a
little distracted, you don't want to leave your circular saw or whatever you are using
to cut plugged in.
What if someone hits the switch and that thing goes off.
It is dangerous.
So make sure you unplug your saw when are not using it.
Now, let's get these sort of branches if you will basically lined up the best we can.
These pallets were not made to make Christmas trees, so just adds a little bit of character
if it is not exactly even.
You don't want to go through both board, just the first one.
Get your screwdriver bit in here for whatever screws you are using.
Now that drill bit that I am using is the same diameter as the threads of my screws
so that I make sure to pull the boards together.
So this is going to basically slide into the first board, get to the second board and pull
them together.
That is your second tree.
Now really that is all there is to it.
As you finish these, I think one of these boards broke.
So now really the most time consuming part of this project is, you know maybe coming
back through here with some little finishing nails or screws and adding some to these pallets
to tighten up the branches if you need to.
The last step is either going to stake these into the ground or make a stand.
So let's talk about that.
Now I am not going to attach this stand to the two trees that I just made because, well
they are going to get staked up in front of our neighbor's houses as Christmas decorations.
But if you do need a stand, you just take two pieces of wood that cut out from the bottom
of the pallet and criss-cross them.
I have predrilled four holes in the top or bottom board, how ever you are criss crossing
these.
I used a pointy drill bit thingy for counter sinking screws.
I don't know really what this is called, probably counter sinking drill bit.
And what you are going to do, is you are just going to screw these together.
Then you need some feet on the ends of whatever board is going to be the top board.
I made these pieces, I cut them right off this board so they are exactly the same width
and you don't get any wobble.
We are going to use some screws.
These are really not the appropriate type of screws.
They are dry wall screws.
I should be using wood screws, but I am just recycling and using what I have.
So we are just going to come in here and with these screws counter-sunk they are not going
to scratch the floor if you are putting them inside your home.
And they are also not going to make the stand wobble.
I am having to be very careful because... well...
these screws are really too short which is also why I made my counter-sinks so darn deep.
I am trying to get the most out of my screws.
Really, as soon as I screw these two little feet on that is going to be the end of my
project and you are going to have a stand that does not wobble.
I am Mr. Tarrou.
That is how you make a pallet Christmas tree.