Before you begin, look over the main How To Build A Worm Bin page to read about the basic requirements of a bin. Once you know these you can deviate as much or little as you would like.
How to build a worm bin out of a deconstructed pallet.
1. Find a pallet.
Pallets are some the easiest ways to get free untreated wood. This pallet was donated to me by Belle Hardware on McMechen Street (in Baltimore).
2. Deconstruct
The nails they use to assemble pallets have teeth at the end of them. They are so difficult to remove that I just took a jigsaw and cut through the two columns of wood, making about 14 pieces on either side. Some pieces were not salvageable. The straighter the wood, the tighter the bin.
3. Cut the pieces to size.
4. Cut a small strip of wood to the height of the inside of the box. In this model, I made the wood strip a board thickness smaller than inside height so that I could fit a lid inside of it.
5. Using clamps, screw wood strips to boards.
It’s a little less important than when you build the bottom, but try to make the wood fit together as tightly as possible.
To screw together, I drilled a hole the size of the inner circumfrence of the screw, and then used a phillips head bit to put the screw in. The pallet wood was a little harder than the 2″ x 4″s, and so I ended up waxing most of them before I screwed them in. In the MICA wood shop, you can usually use two drills at once. This speeds up the process a lot. If the wood is super warped, you can use the belt sander to file them down just the littlest bit.
5. Lid
I made the lid by connecting each of the pieces with a small wood strip, and then fitting it to the inside of the worm bin (so that it slides right into place. Remember the strips on the inside corners of the bin will hold the lid afloat.) The wood pieces seen here are just different scraps lying around, one of them from the big plank bin. Anything goes, so long as the worms have holes to breathe.
To drill those big holes for the handles, I put a scrap piece of wood underneath the lid.
Because the cracks of the lid came close to where I was drilling, one of the holes busted, but with a little sanding it still functioned. This is all that matters. Though I was upset, the worms wouldn’t care.
6. Base
Essentially the same process as constructing the lid. The strips don’t really need to be precisely measured however, because they only raise the bin off the ground. That extra strip is a patch over a part where the wood wouldn’t meet up. To attach to the bin, I clamped it down and screwed it a couple times on each side.
The finished product
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