Drill bits.

[doldrum]

[dewaltdisney]

Get a sharp edged garden spade and ram it hard under a slat and use your weight to lever the handle. This will either lift or split the slat so firewood or hedgehog hut.

DWD

[big-all]

Another fail I'm afraid.
As someone here suggested, the plug cutter slipped and slid all over the place.

Am going to back off for a while.
I don't buying a few tools but I'm not getting anywhere.

it must be the plug cutter sort i have never had a cutter move more than 2mm off line before cutting in and i only ever use it freehand with a battery drill
i use the"C" type random link
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=plug+c ... a49585.jpg

[doldrum]

Success at last.
Well, sort of.
Having pondered the situation I decided to have another crack at it with a fresh approach.
What if I poured water on the wood to soften it some. Might that help ? I wondered.
Probably make the pc more difficult to control.
So, I tried it.
I put the drill setting to 1 and gave it a go.
Was able to hold the pc in place,
It was a slow old job but it worked and if there's one thing I DO have in abundance it's time.
After removing two slats, in one piece, I was knackered but that's just an age thing.

happy days.

[big-all]

once the surface is broken [3-5mm]try faster as its now captive

[doldrum]

Yeah, I did that big-all but the bit got very hot.
I suppose I have to ease off with the pressure some or I shall be spending a fortune on plug cutters.
Getting there b.a. , getting there.

[big-all]

Wetting swells the wood so try dry and see what happens
As for the cutters they where I think rolson or similar cheap and nasty from East fortune Market about 20 odd years ago have cur many hundreds if not thousands off plugs with the only maintainace being coffee or juice to stop me dehydrating

[doldrum]

I tried with the wood dry and couldn't control the cutter, was all over the place.
I suppose I could cut wet just enough to give it a start the let it dry.
But again, I imagine that the wood would be less likely to crack and split while wet.
Will see how it goes.
Living and learning eh ?

[Grendel]

Another alternative that doesn’t involve buying new tools or having tools trying to run away or twist your wrists.
You say the pallets are the slatted type with 3x2 runners and you want the slats. Saw through the 3x2 close to the edge of the slat , that will give you a board with a short length of 3x2 nailed to it. Now , using an old chisel or screwdriver and a hammer split the 3x2 into pieces around the nails . That will leave you with the board with just the nails that can be tapped through and pulled out with a claw hammer.

[doldrum]

After all this huffing , puffing, and pulling of hair.
A thought occurred, why didn't I just cut the pallets to the size that I wanted, then buy a few narrow strips of wood to fill in the gaps with ?
My obsession with reclaiming pallet-wood totally blind sided me.
What an idiot I have been.
It passed a few hours and got me outside for while though, so not all bad.
Like I said, living and learning.
Would have been plenty good enough for what I'm doing.
Oh well, I shall finish stripping this pallet now and that will it.
And actually, I rather like the idea of reclaiming those slats and storing for possible future projects.
Like I said, it gives me something to do, it passes the time.

[Argyll]

When I’m dismantling pallets with a view to keeping the timber i tend to use a reciprocating saw with a metal or dual purpose blade , run down the joint and it comes apart cleanly. Then just punch the nails out from the cut side. Using a drill sounds an awful lot of faff to be honest and I can’t help thinking that using a plug cutter is going to result in several knackered bits…

This is exactly what I do