Fir, Blue Stained Pine, Redwood

You can go to the lumber store and buy oak, popular, walnut, cherry and other specialty hard woods as well as fir, pine, ash and other soft woods. At wood workers' stores you can get exotic woods. Depending on what you want to do and your sensibilities and budget, this may be an option. I sometimes will buy a walnut or cherry plank at the lumber store if I can't find something at the recycle store or from a pallet.

To me, there's a certain economy of resources when one can use a piece of wood that would otherwise be burned or chucked in the land fill. I have found some lovely pieces of red and white oak, green and grey toned popular, blue stained ponderosa pine, white pine, Douglas fir, and some wood that I am not sure of.

Of course some crafts people hate pallet wood. "Don't use it, it will ruin your planer knives." "It may have toxic chemicals sprayed on the wood." "It takes too much effort to rescue a piece you could buy at a lumber store." These may all be true if you are not observant and careful. If you use the underside of the pallet, for example, small pebbles can get embedded and will chip a planer knife. So, for the most part I don't try to plane these boards unless I am pretty sure there isn't gravel in the wood!

As far as nails, I general just cut the boards out of the pallet. This give you plenty of length to make boxes. If you want the 2x4's (which can often be made of oak) then the nails are a bit easier to remove when you can pop out the remaining wood of the plank and then use a crowbar to remove the nails. I have a host of oak 2X4's that I am saving to make a large island bench. Try to buy an oak 2x4!

The planks off a pallet are rough and don't look good at all.

When you plane it, however, sometimes you discover some amazing grains and things you'd never find at a lumber yard! This piece of oak made an amazing box!