Shipping Pallet School Theme Bookbag and Coat Rack

Four 11th graders at the Workshop school in West Philadelphia created a bookbag and coat rack out of a pallet. Our school is a project-based school and a good community is very important to us. Ou design is school themed because we wanted to hang it up in our school. We did this project to collaborate with a new environment, to think about eachother designs and how our designs come together.

Supplies:
Pallet (of course)

Hacksaw

Wood saw

Crowbar

Sandpaper or power sander

Paint - red, grey, yellow, black, pink (optional)

Hooks

Measuring tape

Hammer or drill

Wood glue

This first step is to take the pallet apart and to measure the pieces that you have. This step is very important because you have to be careful taking the wood apart so you can be able to use each and every piece of wood that you have. If the wood break, crack, splinters, etc. the wood can be unuseable.

Use the crow bar and hammer to move the piece of wood apart and take the nails out. If it is hard to get the nail out using the crow bar and hammer you might want to use the hcksaw to start cutting the nail. This would be easier because it's more safe and because you don't have to put much effort into cutting the nails.

Once all you wood is seperated, measure all the pieces and start figuring out what piece is going to be used for what. If you have any wood that broke or cracked you should see what part of your design you can use that piece of wood for. This will help you from waisting pieces of wood.

Our pallet had twenty four pieces of wood: eight we're 39" x 4" , five we're 47" x 4" , two we're 31" x 3" , and nine we're 5" x 3". We ended up discovering that the nine piece that were 5" x 3" we're unusable, so we we're left with fifteen.

Next we had to make a prototype out of the wood we had. Some of our pieces went missing so we had to make a draft of our design with the wood that we had. Out of fifteen pieces we ended up with only eight piece. four of the pieces was four was 39" x 4" which was long enough to be our pencils so we kept them the same length.

two of the pieces was 52" x 5 1/2" and was long enough to to be our bottom piece which was going to be a ruler and our back piece to keep our book bag and coat hanger steady. The last two pieces we had we use to cut out four triangles to be our pencil tips.The four tips we cutted out was 4" x 4" x 4" and they went on top of the four pieces I talked about in the beginning.

Next we sanded all of the wood, particularly the sideds and tips of our pencils. We didn´t want anyone hanging their belongings up and accidently getting a splinter of poked by a piece of wood, so we made the outside of our bookbag annd coat hanger smooth.

We put each piece of wood in a bench vise to hold it in place while we sanded it with a power sander. We made sure to take out the nails that were still in the wood. Next we went over our wood with sandpaper to make our wood more smooth. If you don’t have a power sander, you can use regular sandpaper.

Next we was done sanding all of our long pieces of wood we sanded our triangle pieces (tips of the pencil). When the tips was smooth we used wood glue to add the tips on top of the longer four pieces of wood. After gluing the tips on we used smaller bench vises to keep the pieces and place and letting them dry overnight.

This step is optional. My group started off by painting the four long pieces which was the pencils.the triangle was yellow, tan and black. Black for the pencil point, yellow for the pencil, and tan for in the middle of the pencil and the pencil point. The bottom of the penci was grey, yellow, and red. About a inch of red for the eraser at the bottom. Another inch of grey went next or the piece that hold the eraser on the pencil. The rest of the pencil was yellow.

We colored one of the 52" x 5 1/2" a light pink. We did 2 coats of this pink because it was light. The other 52" x 5 1/2" piece we colored it black because we didn't want our design to have to many colors in it.

First we started off placing the huge pencils on the back piece which was 52" x 5 1/2" and we painted black. We put these on with nails and a nail drill making sure they was on correct so they wouldn't be abled to come off. We used this back piece so all the wood would be stable and so we would have something to nail this up on the wall.

We colored the other 52" x 5 1/2" a light pink because we wanted to be different. After it was dry we started add parts of the ruler on. We laser cutted parts of rulers and pasted them onto the piece. My group glued this and then nailed this piece at the bottom across all the pencils so the pencils could be even more stabled.

After nailing all the pieces together we went and brought some hooks. We needed 12 hooks and they also came with 2 small screws in each pack. We then started adding the hooks on. We screwed the screws on with a screw gun and then made the screws tight with a screw driver. We added two hooks on each pencil and added 4 hooks on the bottom piece which was the ruler.