The picture above shows a rustic bench I made many years ago. It is on the small deck outside the door to my house. It has been there through many winters and rain. It is a useful bench for occasionally sitting on, but more often for staging things that are going in and out of the house.
A couple weeks back, a killing frost was in the forecast and I decided it was time to cut down my wife’s morning glory vines…
I stood on the bench to reach up and do some cutting, and one leg of the bench broke. I fell down. God blessed me in the fall because I fell onto the deck, not the other way, further down, into the little pond my wife created beside the deck. I wasn’t injured.
So the beach was useless with a broken leg and its usefulness was missed. I decided that if I made the bench then I could certainly repair it. So I cut down a dead ash tree in my backyard and selected out several appropriate sections of the tree for new bench legs.
I clamped one section in my bench vise and used an old draw shave to remove the bark and shape the tenon. A bench vise is not the ideal tool for draw-shaving, but it will suffice in a pinch. It tool about a half hour of work, and I had a new leg...
I cut a saw kerf in the tenon and drove a wedge in to secure the leg.
Yes, I plan to replace all the legs, but I don’t have time to do it now. When the time comes for that (next summer, perhaps) I will probably uncover my outdoor table saw and use the unique table saw tenoning technique that I developed (which you have never seen before) and show in This YouTube Video
There is a lot of satisfaction to be had when repairing something, and I was reinded of that with this little project.
What's the last broken thing that you repaired?
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