I went with the sawzall....cut down one side, rotate and cut the other side, then get a prybar in there to help loosen the middle...

anyway you do it, it's a little time consuming. If you have someone helping you to hold the pallets steady and pry up the boards for you to cut, it wouldn't be that bad.

I cut up a bunch of pallets last summer, then didn't use any of the wood...I brought all of it into the garage yesterday hoping that I would try and build something this winter

a big crow bar and a hammer. it is very hard to break apart. oh i almost forgot some EXTRA HANDS

get it? ok its cool.


-BYH

__________________
Make Them SCREAM!!

Whatever way you do this, pallets are a pain to work with.
Yes the wood is free but, it's a lot of work to take them apart.

Last year I was lucky enough to find a long narrow (single piece, 8-10 ft. long) pallet for my haunt as a draw bridge. Only draw back was the gaps between the planks. Ended up taking two regular sized pallets apart to fill the gaps & attached them in place with screws. The nails they used to make these pallets had spiral edges, & even more of a pain to pull out!

I do it the easy way... I use dynamite!

Truthfully, what I do is hit the nail under the head, to twist an old cliche. I put a cut-off wheel on my angle grinder and plunge it into the wood at an angle to cut the heads off the nails just below the surface of the wood. This leaves big ugly marks on the wood and chews up the cut-off wheel a little bit, but I get the cut-off wheels for free and the wood is generally beat up anyways. I can nip the heads off of 6 nails in about 30 seconds if I am set up right. I can knock out a pallet in under 5 minutes, generally and I don't split any of the crossboards. And I hardly break a sweat!

I was just thinking you could probably use your smallest hole saw to cut a plug around each nail, if that was acceptable for the way you were using the boards...

Flat crowbar with a hammer to pound it in. Sawzall is truly the way to go as well. I have also found that pallets vary. I think retail store pallets are easier to pull apart then factory / industrial pallets. Been my experience anyways!

put a metal-cutting blade in a sawzall and go between the boards, cutting the nails. you may bugger up the boards slightly, but who cares?....adds to their effect.
HINT: stand the skids up when you do this...makes the cutting much easier. A jigsaw with a metal-cut blade will do the job too if you take the guide-plate off the bottom.

You could also try a circular saw with a cutting wheel on it...those things just glide through nails.

In all cases, WEAR HEAVY GLOVES AND EYE PROTECTION!!!!

__________________
"I have a secret...........I see stupid people....and they don't know they're stupid..."

well, my sis has her little arms and a hammer, so this may not be a good thing for her.........maybe she can find some fence pickets somewhere

she could always rent the tools needed. Won't need them for very long.

__________________
"I have a secret...........I see stupid people....and they don't know they're stupid..."

she could, but she wouldnt, she isnt a projects kind of person really unless it's easy, simple, can be finished quickly, and did I say easy?

I suspect after all these replies she will pass on the pallets and move on to a new plan...