Anyway, the stricken planter. As you can see, all was not well at all. I ended up taking the thing apart in the end and found uncured glue on the mortises. Humph. I also took a fraction off the width of the panels in case that was exacerbating the problem. Trouble is I forget how darn dry the workshop is these days. Great for furniture for the house; all wrong for outdoor stuff.
Anyway, I broke out my little hatchet and some oak offcuts, rived me some peg material and drove it through the dowel plate to make some sturdy pegs.
All joints are now mechanically locked in (sorry, forgot to take a pic), so if it's gonna come apart again it's going to be so much harder to repair... Funny, the planter's not actually been outside for long, but you wouldn't believe the number of insects and such that high-tailed it out of there once I started in with the mallet. I know it's an oft-quoted thing that one oak tree supports some astronomical number of living things, but an oak planter...?!
Beautiful parrot! Looks like it's having fun. Reminds me of when our children were, well, children. Got the greatest amusement from the odd things. They liked boxes too...
ReplyDeleteGlad the planter otherwise survived. A set I did and needed repairing warped so badly I needed to rebuild pars of a couple. Harder than building them in the first place.
Uncured glue? Now that's a pity. But at least it explains things.
Take care, Mike
perhaps oddly, the REM song you reference helped me through some tough times.
I can remember my nephews both tending to prefer the boxes over the expensive toys within when they were very small. Galling and yet very funny at the same time. The cats love boxes too; one actually managed to get into that tiny LV box rather than let the parrot have it.
ReplyDeleteA good friend sent me a tape (remember tapes?!) including that song when things were really much worse than they are now, and it helped a lot. I suppose half the benefit of it now is remembering that kind thought as much as anything.
Nice hatchet! Expensive lookin' dowel plate though.
ReplyDeleteBugBear (drive-by monitor)