Fix a Broken Garden Chair for Free

I always love to sit in the garden reading the newspaper after a hard days work. So of course I have a bunch of chairs to sit to together with friends or family. The problem with this is that companies like to make chairs that break down, and the always break at the same point, the plastic hinges at the back of the seat. So I decided to make a Fix for this.

Material needed:

Melting glue

2 pieces of 8 mm steel rods of 6 cm long

I used a 12 cm long 8mm bolt that I had lying around, but it can be just about any piece of steel of about this size

Tools:

drill 5mm

fastener rivets pliers

melt glue gun

Vice

hacksaw

hammer

knife

My first plan was to drill a hole through the back of the hinge, bit I
decided it would be better to work from the inside, so that I could preserve as much strength from the hinge as possible. So I unbolted the centre bolt of the hinge and drilled out the fastener rivets with a 5mm drill bit, and was able to work out the bottom piece of the hinge wit a flat screwdriver, even without breaking the hinges further. Next step is to clean out the inside to make room for the steel bars. there is a reinforcement in the plastic that needs to be removed. So I cut it out with my utility knife. I bent one end of the rods a bit so they could go in deeper, just by putting them in the vice, and hitting them a few times with the hammer so they followed the curve of the hinge.

Time for glueing: I did this in two turns. first I put a Hinge upright in the vice, filled the bottom cavity halfway with melting glue and also the back side of the top piece so that there would be a good connection between the rod and the glue, and inserted the rod. I then filled the bottom part completely with melting glue while making sure that all the cracks where nicely filled with melt-glue, and secured the hinge in the final positing with a clamp

This much glue is very hot, so mind your fingers, and needs some time to cool down, so I let this sit for a few minutes, after the glue stiffens up a bit, I rotated the hinge 90 degree to fill up the front side.

If you don't have a clamp a bit of tape works to. it's just needed to keep the thing in place while the glue hardens. Last step is to fill up the entire slot in the hinge, but keep in mind there is room needed for the inner profile of the chair, so you cannot fill up to mutch. I let this cool of a bit, but made sure the glue in the hinges were still a bit soft when I placed the hinges back in the chair so I wouldn't have problems with glue being to thick somewhere.

Final step is to secure the hinges again with a fastener rivet, so that they will stay in place, and screw the chair back together. If you don't have pliers for rivers, a little screw works just ads good.

Wait about an half an hour for the glue to totally cool down and get to full strength, after that you can sit in the chair again and rest on your laurels