Our outdoor umbrella broke a few arms and so we decided to repair it. The umbrella is not particularly expensive and we could easily replace it. But it does seem wasteful to throw away a whole umbrella for merely minor problems.
What happened was that the plastic hinges broke where the arm attaches to umbrella top for four of the arms. I replaced the hinges with lightweight aluminium tent pegs that had the hook hammered into an eye. Aluminium is soft enough to work with a hammer without heating. I then put the eyes into the attachment rose but lost one of the pins!
This picture shows one of the tent stakes that formed new hinges, the old plastic broken hinges and the remnants of a nail. Yes, we replaced a lost hinge pin with a cut down section of nail! The arms were attached to the tent pegs using duct tape.
The whole operation took a couple of evenings, mostly because refitting all the arm hinges and pins was a nightmare.
In the end we have a useable umbrella. I'll be more careful about leaving it up when the wind is blowing.
At all times, Mor-mor 沫沫 the Labrador was around assisting. Here she is testing my French commando desert tent. These single layer, non water proofed and used tents were selling cheap so I grabbed one. It came with a strange coffee stain on the floor and a lot of fine desert dust coating everything. It took a brush and wireless vac to clean the tent up.
Until next time.