I was finally able to get all of the industrial wood staples removed from the wooden shipping crate that I found abandoned on the side of the road.

It was a lot of work, but once I found a technique to getting the staples out it went pretty quick. There were over 200 staples for me to remove from the crate to get it all apart.

As you can see in the attached picture I have a pair of pliers that are made for gripping pipe. I used these to grip the top of the staple and I rolled the pliers on the rounded nose part like a lever to get them out. It worked really well as long as you're pulling the staple at the same angle that it was shot into the wood at. If I couldn't get a grip on the staple I used a flat screwdriver and sometimes a hammer to get in under the staple and pull it up enough so that I could get the pliers on it.

These types of staples really make a mess of thing and there were five staples at every wood joint which were shot in at different angles to hold everything together really tight. Their construction technique does make for good, tight, strong and quick joints but it sure doesn't make it easy for someone to take them apart.

The whole thing took me about four hours to do. I checked every board carefully to make sure there was no leftover metal as any metal fragment would be disastrous if encountered with a power-tool that's made for working with wood.

I was actually surprised at the amount of wood I was able to recover. Some of it is poor quality but it can be cut down and used in smaller pieces or glued together with another piece to gain some thickness or width if the project needs it.

Not every board I recovered from the recycled shipping crate is straight, flat and pretty but I'm still up for and working on this challenge!

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