Learn How to Identify the Different Types of Pallet Wood!

If you are on this page, is certainly because you have found some wooden pallets and you have checked that they are safe to use for your project. But maybe, you are asking yourself what wood types pallets are made of? I bet you’ve asked yourself that a few times too. Pallet woodworking is a sensory experience. To that end, I’m going to share my “What the heck is the wood type of this pallet?” learning curve with you. I’ve been working with pallets for a little over two years now, and I know my limits. I’m a hobbyist, but I’m a HAPPY hobbyist. I’m a nurse by trade and got into working with pallets because I was too cheap (er…frugal…) to buy an overpriced, poor-quality wood chaise lounge. I apologize in advance to the true professionals that’ll read this and shake their heads. But hey, none of us started out as experts. That’s where my journey begins…

Learn How to Identify the Different Types of Pallet Wood!

Hardwood and Softwood types of wood: “As a general rule, hardwood originates from deciduous trees, those who lose their leaves annually, and softwood originates from resinous trees, those who remain evergreen year long.

OK. **Yawn** That’s the definition I found out on the net. Thank you to LCN Pallets & Crates for their description! But where’s a particular wood name to these deciduous trees vs. resinous trees so I can look up pictures? There’s no nursing guide for that, haha! I first learned that the wood used to make wooden pallets and crates can typically be divided into three categories:

  • High-density hardwood: Birch, Cherry, Oak, Maple, Ash, Beech, Yellow Birch, Elm, and Red Maple
  • Low-density hardwood: Walnut, Poplar, Willow, Linden, and Aspen
  • Softwood: Cedar, Cypress, Spruce, Pine, Hemlock, Spruce, and Fir

This can vary based on the country of origin, so that’s another topic altogether that would be great for someone with a higher skill level than me to address. For my hobbyist-level skill, I only care about what kind of wood is in front of me and is it soft and simple to sand, or is it hard and more appropriate for structural applications. And do I have enough sanding discs! :)

Kind Of Pallet Wood Types

I just assumed that all pallets were made of the same wood. HA! I was totally wrong. Only in the process of dismantling them with a Sawzall, I discovered some were easy, and others, if the blade went crooked, FOUGHT! Then I noticed that two pallets, roughly the same size could have drastic weight differences, despite looking the same. Why? My husband knew all of this already; he just never thought to tell me… or maybe he wanted a good laugh (either may be correct, dear readers). I didn’t know that mixing a couple of different “colors” of wood would make a difference in the build, but WOW was I wrong.

I started noticing that the wood had several differences: weight, grain pattern, rough texture (when oak pallets age, they can almost get “fuzzy” with the way the grain starts to separate and stick up), more or fewer knots or defects, how they warp, etc. I saw that the end-grain on the edges of the boards looked different too. I identified more, and here’s my list:

Learn How to Identify the Different Types of Pallet Wood!
Learn How to Identify the Different Types of Pallet Wood!
Pine Wood
Learn How to Identify the Different Types of Pallet Wood!
308 Reviews
Wood Identification & Use: Identification & Use
  • Hardcover Book
  • Porter, Terry (Author)

I identified more, and here’s my list:

Weight

Pine pallets are a lot lighter than Oak pallets. My back appreciates loading Pine pallets into our vehicle and tells me I’m evil when we find Oak pallets. I kind of lump Pine in with Ash & Fir – they all feel the same weight to me. Usually, we get a lot of Southern Yellow Pine in my area of the world.

Sanding

The most significant difference that got me sorting my pallet wood was when I started SANDING. I could sand (using a random-orbit sander) three or four boards, both sides until very smooth with one hook-and-loop sanding disc, while other boards needed a disc each. Yeah, probably a slight exaggeration, but you get the point. Why were some boards almost invincible, while others seemed to melt like butter if you over-sanded? Hmmm. Interesting question. By the way, sometimes sanding can help you identify wood by accident. I found out I’m allergic to Redwood after sanding it and breaking out in hives. I only work with Redwood on long-sleeve days now!

Learn How to Identify the Different Types of Pallet Wood!
Learn How to Identify the Different Types of Pallet Wood!
Oak Wood
Sale
Learn How to Identify the Different Types of Pallet Wood!
663 Reviews
Understanding Wood: A Craftsman's Guide to Wood Technology
  • Hardcover Book
  • R. Bruce Hoadley (Author)

Cutting

Cut a Pine board on a table saw or using a chop saw, and the only real resistance is a knothole. Cut an Oak board, and the whole thing is a challenge, and you get burn marks at the knotholes from the blade slowing and slightly binding. Poplar is challenging to cut, too. Just how the boards run across the saw can give you some clues. Redwood chips quickly and gets those little pokey bits when using a chop saw; Red Maple doesn’t (at least in my limited experience).

Smell

The other thing I started to notice is the smell of the wood. This is usually when I’m sanding them, but sometimes with cutting too. You’ll DEFINITELY know when you get a Pine pallet – you sand over a knothole, and you get that fantastic Pine-sap smell! Sanding or cutting Oak boards makes me think of barbecue since we use Oak for cooking. Have an Oak pallet board get stuck on a band saw, or when the circular or table saw struggles with a knot, and I’m hoping it’s dinner time! PS – Avoid Oak sanding if you’re on a diet, haha! Redwood smells a tiny bit like cedar TO ME – but don’t be upset if you don’t agree – it’s OK!

Learn How to Identify the Different Types of Pallet Wood!
Redwood
Sale
Learn How to Identify the Different Types of Pallet Wood!
342 Reviews

Planing (with a hand planer)

When you try to level out a piece that you’ve mixed different wood media, you find out real quick about end-grain, with-the-grain, and against-the-grain. The other problem is that some woods plane easily – no surprise – the softwoods, while the hardwoods resist my feminine wiles! I’ll slide the plane along a piece of Pine and stutter to a stop on an adjoining hardwood. Many a blister has been formed, no thanks to the mighty Oak.

Color (wettest)

I learned a while ago that when two pieces have me guessing, I just put a few drops of water on them – particularly near/on a defect, knot, or a grain swirl. Gross-factoid: I discovered this on a hot summer day. I know – ew – women “glisten,” right? Anyways, dry Pine looks like Pine. Dry Pine also looks somewhat similar to Ash, Poplar, Fir, Birch, Beech, Maple and even Pecan (sorry – I know Pecan isn’t common, but I have some Pecan logs I’ve been working with). They’re all pale. They’re all pretty. Wet Pine does NOT look like Wet Poplar. Poplar almost goes a little silvery to me, where the Pine stays that lovely pale gold. Sometimes you’ll see the heavy graining that you didn’t notice before, or see different styles/patterns of grain that don’t match all the other Pine boards you’ve touched.

I’ve sometimes had to resort to cutting off a skinny slice from one end of both boards. Then I’ll touch, smell them, and even take regular sandpaper to them and see if I think they’re the same (or similar enough to work for my project). I’m still not 100% able to identify everything, but my “mad skills” are improving.

The other reason I cared about hardwood vs. softwood is that sometimes, rare or exotic woods are used – as a native tree always seems to have less importance to the locals, but foreigners are EXCITED to get those pallets! Supposedly there’s a kind of black-market for exotic pallets. All I have to do is to look around my 1920’s California Bungalow, LOADED with 1920’s California Redwood as SECONDARY wood (including building a tool shed and carriage house out of two layers of tongue-and-groove Redwood siding!!!) and I can see an example of not valuing local timber. There used to be Redwoods in the Southern California mountains in the 1920s… until they were all cut down. I suppose native trees may be considered a “junk wood,” but if I get my hot little hands on some Curly Maple or Purple Heartwood, I will squeal with delight! Finding an exotic-wood pallet would be this California gal’s modern-day gold rush!

My recent experience with this is that I’m pretty sure that I got a couple of pallets made from RED MAPLE. However, at first, I thought it was just a different type of Oak, but it didn’t quite sand the same. It didn’t make my mouth water for barbecue either. Then I looked at images of wood types and guessed that it was maybe a variety of the red-tinged Mahogany family. Now, I’m about 90% sure that I lucked out with Red Maple – I got to feel and SMELL some recently. Ha! My sensory detective work put to the test! I’ve read that sometimes there are pallets with Mahogany, Teak, Ebony, Purple Heartwood, and even Ebony out there. Alas, not for me … yet.

Learn How to Identify the Different Types of Pallet Wood!
Red Maple
Sale
Learn How to Identify the Different Types of Pallet Wood!
100 Reviews

So, dear readers, if you’ve stayed with me so far, perhaps you can follow me through one more paragraph? As you learn to enjoy woodworking with pallets, you’ll become a detective of sorts. You’ll learn to use all your senses (sometimes even suffering a rash from it if you’re like me). You’ll feel that rough/fuzzy texture of an old Oak pallet in a shadowy woodpile and won’t even have to see it. You’ll learn to spot and sort your stacks of broken-down pallets by their end grain. Sweat can finally be your friend – flying it around! You’ll challenge any Bloodhound to his sniffing skills. No website will be able to fully teach you to identify the wood. You’ll have to get out there and EXPERIENCE it to really get it. You’ll probably have a lot of fun doing it, too.

Good to know: The two most common wood types used for making shipping pallets are southern yellow pine and oak. In the United States of America, a former study done by the USDA and Virginia Tech determined that southern yellow pine wood was used in 18.9% of all the produced pallets while oak was used in 17.1% (by volume) of the produced pallets. Both oak and SYP actually contain several species that make up the woods classification which is based on the density of the wood.

Southern yellow pine wood: available in quantity and at a meager cost. It can be kiln-dried (KD stamp, see our safety page) and provides a clean product.

Oakwood: used for its strength and also availability. The pallets are made from leftover oak lumber that was not used for making furniture. Oak is also one of the stronger hardwood species.

The current trend by many pallet producers is not to separate out pallet material by species, but rather by hardwood vs. softwood.

Below is an interesting infographic by Furniture.co.uk that will show you a brief overview of the different types of wood and, if you are interested in learning more about all woods that exist, you should visit The Wood Database website.

Learn How to Identify the Different Types of Pallet Wood!
4.8 6 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
guest
36 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Elizabeth
Elizabeth

Thank you for this. I’m a nurse and a single mom. Money is really tight right now and I want to build my daughter some play equipment for the backyard. People are always advertising free pallets, so I’m researching how I can build something with pallet wood and get it to last at least a few years until I’m ina better financial position.
Thanks!

Ockham
Ockham

Good for you for salvaging pallet wood! I don’t want to sound like a grumpy Gus, but be aware that much of what you have discovered by long hours of tedious trial and error is information that would have been easily available on one of the various woodworking forums – before you wasted time and knuckles figuring it out yourself. Beyond that, some of what you mention is downright dangerous practice. One simple example, if your chop saw is “binding and burning” (as you mention) when you cut oak, you have the wrong saw blade in your saw, or your… Read more »

Keith
Keith
Reply to  Ockham

True words. And because you know how to use one tool, doesn’t make you proficient with others. I thought I knew how to use a table saw, till I got one and started using it. Pros make things look easy and that can be misleading. Conceptually simple does not mean easy. For any action there is probably 5 things minimum that are being done out of habit.

Christina in SW FL
Christina in SW FL

I admit… I am a newbie. No place to store any collected pallet wood so I am a lurker rather than collector at this time. That said, I never even considered that pallets would be made out of anything but pine. Yup, newbie-itis. lol Thanks for the article which was fun to read, crazy over the top informative in a great way and some outstanding graphics.
So… I guess I need enough pallet wood to build a shed to store more pallet wood. lol

Keith
Keith

Look up Steve Ramsey on Youtube. He has a great video for making wood cart. I built mine very similar and works great.

palleton

I am a beginner palletier. I began by looking for HT pallets for my garden. Then I became excited about all the possibilities of building projects. I have visited the Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe a couple of times. The legend states that a man showed up and said he was going to build a staircase because the chapel had a choir loft without a stair case because they ran out of room. Three mysteries surround the staircase: the identity of the builder, the type of wood used, and the physics of its construction. The staircase has two 360 degree… Read more »

chipmunk
Reply to  palleton

I have seen that episode on unsolved mysteries and it showed the stair case, beautiful staircase, all he wanted was food & shelter,and built staircase for the nuns to sing in the choir. AMAZING

Trevor
Trevor

Thanks for the write up!
Just wanted to say that when you’re sanding, be sure to wear respiratory protection (especially oak as it’s an A1 carcinogen)

Happy Day
Happy Day

Hello Everyone!
I’m one of those who did come across some amazing pieces of pre ban Amazon rain forest Brazilian pallets built for Boeing airline Corp about twenty five or thirty years ago. Well preserved. I acquired this lot recently and wish to share it with all rather than a single buyer. How do you guys think I should go forward?

Geoffrey Skinner
Geoffrey Skinner

Thank you! I’m currently collecting for a project and though I’ve been playing around with wood since I was a small boy, I realized I was having a hard time IDing the wood on the most common type available in my office neighborhood. I thought it was the oak I was hoping for, but it’s suspiciously light. Sounds like taking one home to investigate closer is my best bet.

Geoffrey Skinner
Geoffrey Skinner

I’ll be sure to post photos when I get my shop furniture project together

Jesse Matterson
Jesse Matterson

Is there a worked cited citation for this article?

NickL.
NickL.

Thank you soooooo much!! Excellent writing style!

Mike Badger (Pallets of Fine Art)
Mike Badger (Pallets of Fine Art)

It is so gratifying when a mystery is solved or during the moments of discovery and the journey’s thousandth and final step. Or the view of the summit horizon while still in the distance but not far away. Or maybe the first of many steps being contemplated and an inkling to begin the arduous path; while there are many travelled inroads, the magnet pulling at your meddle is of course the one less travelled. Perhaps your best tool is the machete. So yeah, going into Rockler was more akin to viewing an exhibit of fine art. After a while I’d… Read more »

DebBassett
DebBassett

Excellent information and enjoyable reading! Thanks so much!

Brian
Brian

Thank you for sharing your experience and using plain language. I am just embarking on a project to build a workshop and fill it with power tools (being a man it’s got to be done) lol. I have a small wood burner and when I see some of the wood I cut to burn it is really sacrilegious. I hope to repurpose some of the wood into new but rustic furniture items. I am at least enthusiastic if not experienced. Good luck with your future projects.

Lance R.
Lance R.

I apreciate this article and the graphic depicting many wood kinds. I recently brought home about 8 pallets from work, 2 of which were extremely heavy, with full 4″ slats on top and bottom. The wood has a red tint to it. when I began taking those 2 apart (took a full weekend doing so without destroying the wood!) I realized just how hard some wood could be. The grip it had on those spiral nails. when ever I would go to use it, I would absolutely HAVE to drill pilot holes first. I used to frame houses and know… Read more »

Tim
Tim
Reply to  Lance R.

I’ve seen some and I currently have a pallet with some of this wood that has a red or pinkish tint to it. That’s actually how I ended up on this article. Trying to figure out what species it is. No closer but not waisted time for sure. Did u ever figure it out? I want to see some could possibly be maple that has gotten darkened from the sun ☀️

This article is extremely helpful! Seeing all the different woods used in making pallets made me wonder about what types of woods were used for transporting different items–and what type of pallet would work for the projects i’m currently trying to do. One project is a walkway in our backyard (we can’t grow grass in one area so the pallets help). That is a work in progress, since i had no “plans” and did it on my own. the other project which needs to be done by the end of fall is a feral cat shelter from=pallets. I have several… Read more »

Judi
Judi

Great article! So informative, I’ve learned a lot. Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge.

John Duffy
John Duffy

Well written and very informative. I learned a lot.

taylor hicken
taylor hicken

I never knew that there was so much details dealing with wooden pallets. I’ve been doing some research because my husband wants to find some for our garage. He told me that he’s going to start working on a few projects around the house and he needs the wooden pallets for them. But, I have no idea what type of project he is talking about.

Armylpn
Armylpn

I’m a nurse, but I love woodworking! I’ve been experimenting with pallets since we get a couple deliveries a day on pallets and they aren’t allowed to stay in the building due to them being fomites. My job just throws them away, so I have access to all i want, I just have to figure out what wood is worth taking and what I want to leave haha. I’m up to my eyeballs in southern pine.

Samantha
Samantha

I’m new to the pallet world and about to go pick up my first ones. I know the industry can vary which wood you’ll find so once you find a good honey hole keep it for yourself. I’m building a house and using pallets for 700sqft of end grain wood tile flooring and possibly an end grain countertop. Now to get my first pallets and start cutting the 14000 tiles.

stampershane74

That was probably the best learning tool I have seen to date! And like you, when I take apart a heavy pallet it’s like Christmas morning, tearing off the paper (or dirt in sake of a pallet) and finding out what treasure I have and what I can now plan :)

Vicky Henson
Vicky Henson

I really appreciate learning about this from you. Thank you so much!

Vivi
Vivi

Very interesting…Thank you…

kathymccown

Thankyou!!

Scroll to Top