Morley Kert is known for turning a piece of trash into treasure.
His YouTube channel will show you how he creates simple yet elegant pieces out of wooden pallets. The great thing about his videos is that he doesn’t only show how it’s done; he includes the cost and the time it took him to make his piece so he can compute how much he earned for it.
He saw a listing on Facebook Marketplace of a pallet for free.
The owner said they had it when they bought some mulch for their garden in bulk. Morley was quick to message them and got the pallet for free.
The first thing Morley did was to take out each board from the whole pallet.
He used a circular saw to cut off the sides and pulled them out from the middle. Next, he removed all the nails until there were none left. Unfortunately, one of the nails got stuck, but he decided to deal with it later.
Like any pallet, Morley cannot use all the wood in it.
Half of it was made of softwood, while some parts with nail cracks, and others were already soft and rotten. The good news was the other half was made of hardwood and was in good condition.
Morley started to do a shallow pass of the boards on the planer.
He wanted to see the grain of the wood, and after that shallow pass, it was beautiful. The grain was perfect for a coffee table or desk. Then, he cut the boards to equal thickness and planed them again to give the wood an ideal texture for gluing.
He glued the wood into two batches for better tension from the clamps.
Once the glue was dry and set, he planed both slabs again to create a cleaner finish before he glued both slabs together. However, he saw a clear gap between them, and he decided to fill it in first before filling the knot holes with epoxy.
Filling the gap first is important so the epoxy won’t run through it.
He sanded the surface, used the sawdust, and mixed it with wood glue. He used the mixture to fill in the gaps and let it dry.
It was a trial-and-error phase, but it worked well with putting clear epoxy in the knot holes. Once everything was set, he sanded the surface again to give it a better finish.
Then, Morley trimmed the ends to level every piece of wood.
He sanded the sides, filled the remaining holes and gaps, and sanded them again. Then, he added a bevel on the edges so it wouldn’t be too sharp.
He did a dramatic chamfer at the bottom and a light one on top.
Finally, some finishing touches for a beautiful desk!
He did a few coats of gloss varnish before doing the final coat using a stain varnish finish. The result was spectacular. The table looked beautiful!
He attached the table legs, and it was perfect!
Morley posted his work-in-progress on his Instagram account and instantly got a buyer named Mackenzie.
They worked collaboratively along the process and came up with this beautiful piece.
He delivered the table to Mackenzie, and he was so happy with the result that he added $200 to their original price agreement, bringing the total up to $1,200.
What do you think of this piece? Watch the entire process in the video below.
