Thread: fix up a wonky cot back

If you try to wrack it, you will, at best, break the glue seal, at worst, crack or break some of the timber components. You need to get the whole thing apart and start again. You can try pouring hot water into the joins; this may soften the glue enough to pull it apart.

This probably is your first major project and it didnt quite work. Well if you want to work wood, wou are going to do several of these things. Your error was not having a base to hold square, So look how you could do it better next time, throw that in the bin and try again.
If you stop at your first failure, give up woodwork, most of us will be dead before we know half of what we want to know about working wood.

hmmm not sure i can face making it again. I will if i have too.
i'm hoping i can soften it with boiling water and try to bend it back into shape.
If the worst that's going to happen is it will break and i'll have to start again i'm no worse of for trying.

Thank you both for the advice

have you got some more info for a "base"? do you mean just a couple of ends nailed together to make a square to keep it true?

Sometimes there are ways you can work around a mistake. I'm not sure what the rest of your design, is, but maybe you can add a further rail or upright which would give you a chance to straighten up the edges?

Maybe you could post a photo?

You may be able to soak the joints in hot water and pull the frame into square with a ratchet strap. If you can't straighten it it will stand out like the dogs "proverbial's" when you put the other part of the cot up against it. Then you will have what a lot of us have, which is a heap of useful scraps that you can either use on another job or elsewhere on your current job.

TT

Thanks for all your replies.
A couple of people at work suggested using a steam cleaner to jet steam into the joints to soften. Which sounded like a good idea.
But i didin't have one and neither did my neighbours, so...
I attatched the frame to the supports of my deck which were (more or less) verticle and horizontal.
I only had two ratchet straps and i think a third would have made it easier to assemble but no more effective.
basically i assembled it so pulling it up and level would cause the conkyness to be pulled straight.
I waited until the sun was on it before apply one click of tension on the verticle ratchet.
then every half hour one more click.
at midday i dribbled some water into the lower joints at approx 60-80C and wiped the excess off.
then waited 15 minutes, and more clicks.
a big "clack" was heard which could have been the glue seal breakign but equally could have been the ratchet settling.
i continued for another hour then measured.
The result was it was still 10mm out.
then i realsied it was now 10mm out in the OTHER direction.

i removed all the straps, fliped it horizontally and gently repeated the process over the next two hours.
now all is good.
I left in the garage overnight and measured it, it has not returned to wonky town. And still feels faily well glued (it doesn't wobble, none of the slats are loose)

so, in conclusion:
I probably didin't have enough glue, which meant i was lucky enough to bend it back. Which is awesome, as baby is coming soon, and i don't have two more weekends to spend on mortice and tenon joints

thanks for all your inputs!
picture attatched which i hope make a bit more sense

Sorry you are not in melbourne as we have cots to give away(Salvos don't want them)as our kids have no plans for more grandkids we have good cots (2)
May save someone the pain if making a new one.

ha, thanks for the offer but what i've spent on wood alone would be enough to buy two fairly decent cots.
I can't stop building now :0)

Good work Magnets99

Another thing that worked for you was your patience. You didn't rush it and got the good result


TT