Pallet Picnic table

If you have some disposable wooden pallets laying around (or know where to 'get' some), here's how you can turn them into a four person Pallet Picnic Table.
Our design is composed out of 3 pallets, although it could easily be done with 2, requiring bit more cuts and screws.

The final result

The pallets are cut into building-blocks, which are stacked and screwed together. Once assembled, the table consists of two interlocking parts. The top part can be taken off, and stored under/inside the bottom part. This saves storage space, especially when stored on its side, behind a shed, like we do.

Two parts

The Shopping List
For this build, you will need the following:

• 3 pallets, 2 of which should be the same size, preferably 120x120cm, the third one is only needed for the spacer blocks, so can have any dimension. The top laths should run in the width of the pallet, not the length.
• a bunch of plywood screws and matching screwdriver. We used 35mm by 4mm scews, the length of the screw should not be more than twice the thichness of the laths.
• a jig saw (electrical)
• a crowbar
• a claw hammer
• earplugs are nice. We had to bang the metal crowbar with the metal hammer to dismantle the third pallet.
• a electrical sander

The Pallets
Pallets come in many forms and shapes. I found some really sturdy ones, a bit bigger than usual (120x120cm), with 2 extra cross-laths on the bottom. Our design is based on this type of pallet. Because of their extra width (120cm) the resulting picknick table will accommodate 4 persons. The more readily available standard 'euro' pallets are 120x100cm, and can be used just as well, but will result in a romantic 2 person table (or perhaps 4 kids). Please note that the top laths should run in the width of the pallet, not the length as in most common pallets.

Depending on the pallets you have at hand, you will probably have to tweak the design and improvise while you build. With 3 pallets, you will have plenty of left over wood to switch up the design and make enhancements where needed.


The Design
For this design (assuming you have those extra sturdy pallets, like we had), you only have to cut two pallets in the right places, stack the resulting parts in the right way, and adjust the hight of the whole thing by placing something underneath the corners. We used the spacer-block from a third pallet, but you could use anything that suits (e.g. stacks of leftover wood from the first two pallets).

Here are some images of the design. You can download the 3D model for Google Sketchup, so you can check out the design from every angle and get a full grip on the design. The 3D model also shows how to cut the pallets up into the required building-blocks.

How to cut pallet 1

How to cut pallet 2

Front view

Side view - separated components

3D view - Exploded

The complete 3D design

Stacking the building-blocks

Dismantling a Pallet

In this movie, you can see how easy it is to dismantle a standard pallet. Please note that for this design, you should only dismantle the third pallet. The first two should keep as much of their sturdiness as possible. Also, the pallet in the movie has its top laths running in the length, which makes them unusable for this design (unless you dismantle it completely and rebuild it with the laths running width-wise).

The pallets we used in our design are non-standard ones, with laths running along all sides of the the bottom. That's why our dismantling didn't go as smoothly as in the movie. Not even close! We ruined quite some laths in the process, but we only needed the spacer-blocks anyway.


Please, Give Feedback!
If you copy this design and/or build upon it, or do something else with pallets, I would love to hear about it. Please leave a comment with or without a link to your own project.
You might also want to take a look at these pallet furniture designs, this pallet coffee-table, or the links on this Life Hackery post,  for inspiration.