Seesaw From an Old Tire

My wife showed me this cool idea on pinterest:

Tire Teeter Totter

She picked up a slightly damaged tire for free from a tire shop so we could make one, too. I've departed from the original design a little.

Tools

• Jigsaw

• Router

• Angle Grinder

• Utility Knife

• Drill
• Hack Saw
• Tape Measure
• Paint brushes

• Forstner bits
  

• Sand Paper
  

• Socket Set
  

Materials

• Wood: 2x10 inch x 8 feet dimensional lumber, 2x4 and 2x6 scraps
• Scrap Tire
• Paint
• Exterior clear finish
  

• Lag screws

• Washers

• Conduit or other metal pipe cut to 8 inch lengths with the hack saw
• Deck Screws

Trickier than it looks- you have to cut through about 30 steel ropes inside the rubber. For the sidewalls, a knife works well. For the steel, I used an angle grinder.

The grid behind the pieces in these photos is in inches. I made a pattern with the curved shape shown in the first photo, then marked it on the large board on both sides of each end and cut it with my band saw, although a jigsaw works, too. After sanding away the saw marks, starting with 60 grit and working up, I put a 1/4 round bead on the edges with my router.

The other pieces, I cut with a miter saw. The pieces in the second photo also have pilot holes in the center of the edges around the outside for the lag screws. These will be screwed to the bottom of the long board to hold the tire, which will wrap around them.

I bored the holes for the handles about 1 inch deep with a forstner bit in the pieces shown in the 3rd photo.

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We had fun painting with leftover paint from inside the house. After we painted, I added some polyurethane, which I do not recommend for outdoors. Since then I have had better results from an acrylic exterior clear coat, listed earlier.

I put the handles in their brackets and located them as shown in the first photo, then attached them with deck screws from underneath.

I flipped the board upside-down, centered the tire and marked the locations for the pieces that go inside. Then I attached them to the board with deck screws and then attached the tire with lag screws on each side and the ends as shown in the second photo.

The third photo shows where I attached pieces of leftover sidewall with drywall screws. These serve as pads for the seesaw to land on, instead of scraping the wood.

If you like this style of step-by-step instruction, please share with others and subscribe, so you'll be notified when I post more. If you have questions, please post them in the comments. I will try to answer and probably update the instructions, too. Read about more of my woodworking projects and tools at ChipsWoodShop.com.