Wood Pile "book End" Supports From Pallet

I have a rather large pile of logs against the garage wall under a lean-to, which are used to feed a hungry wood-burning stove during the colder months. Following a recent delivery of logs, I've run into the problem of the logs at the end of the pile collapsing (a single-dimensional wood avalanche!). This is particularly acute at the moment as the dry logs are all at the bottom of the pile and I need to do a lot of shifting around to get to them.

This instructable shows how I used bits from some old pallets to make the equivalent of book-ends for the log pile, where the weight of the logs holds the vertical supports in place and prevents the ends collapsing. These have the advantage that I don't need to drill holes in the wall behind and can move them easily if the log pile needs to change size.

Naturally you build these at your own risk - mine appear to be sturdy enough for the job but I'm not loading them excessively and I haven't monitored them over a period of months.

You will need:

• A pallet (broken into pieces) - I had a couple of very small pallets which I used as the base, but you could fabricate these from a larger one easily enough
• Nails (I recycled the ribbed ones from the pallet as they don't come loose easily)
• Hammer
• Cross-cut hand-saw
• Wood-preserver

This is a very simple concept so I'm not going to spin it out into loads of steps.

Step 1: Assemble the 'book Ends'

The photo shows the finished pair of book ends, both before and after painting with wood preserver. The construction is extremely simple and hardly needs any description at all, provided you are competent with basic carpentry.

Key features of each half:

• Small pallet-type base to elevate stored wood above floor
• Two vertical boards (nailed to the base of the pallet) with a cross-member at the top to hold them together
• A third board positioned obliquely to hold the vertical boards at a right-angle to the base and to prevent them moving when under load.

Cut off any bits of the oblique board which protrude beyond the main body of the book-end. Don't forget to make a handed pair!

Then coat with wood preserver all over and load up.