Izzy Swan has much in common with Ron Paulk: Both guys know their way around a shop and ran their own businesses, neither guy went to D-school yet both design things that lots of other people want to buy.
Swan developed his Pallet Pal tool as a simple way to dismantle shipping pallets to reclaim the wood from them. The design of the tool relies mechanical advantage and body weight rather than physical strength to produce the power; Swan posted a video of his 7-year-old daughter demonstrating how to use the tool. Well, people started ordering the thing in droves, and then a company looking to kit their workers out with the device ordered a boatload. Swan was faced with the classic independent designer's problem where you've got to move from tinkering to reproducing—quickly.
To crank these things out in batches, Swan devised a number of clever workshop solutions that would maintain consistency while speeding production time. First off, check out how he turns the handles. Lathe? Nah, not fast enough—try a power drill and a table saw with a dado stack:
You probably observed the centering marks Swan drew on the endgrain of the handle blanks, by which he can drill the holes needed to mount them to the jig. In the following vid Swan shows the contraption he rigged up to cut that step in half, and follows it up with his entire jig-filled production process. Along the way he explains why he runs his flap sander backwards, and you'll also catch a glimpse of a disc sander he made out of a juicing machine:In the vidoes Swan mentions that he was temporarily shutting down production of the Pallet Pals. But these were shot back in March, and Swan appears to have restarted production on them.
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Then again, if you're making a lot of that specific part, Izzy's table saw jig can't be beat.