Men’s Shed has an ongoing project: renew/refurbish the numerous park benches throughout the retirement village where we rent our premises. A hardware store contacted us asking if we wanted some merbau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intsia_bijuga timber which they have in the form of 15 foot-long pallets. That timber is perfect for the park benches so we snapped up the offer. One fellow fetched his chainsaw & 8 foot long trailer & a few of us went to get the stuff. The chainsaw is used to cut the pallets into lengths more suited to fitting in the trailer.
Next we had to get the nails & staples out of the wood, it’s really dry & the nails are stubborn. I used an angle grinder to shorten the protruding nails so they don’t bend when tapped back for later removal. It’s much quicker than snipping each one with pliers.