Futon Repair

We bought a futon/couch for our oldest son when he moved into a duplex at the beginning of last school year (2007). Sometime this year one of the sides supporting the main pivot split. He had been supporting the pivot on a pile of old books, but it wasn't a real good solution. Saturday I took him back to Eugene and helped him repair the couch. We took the side loose from the rest of the couch, drilled a bunch of holes, applied some glue, and put it back together using six 2 inch screws. We scabbed on a small piece of one by four using a dozen or so drywall screws and then reattached the arm to the rest of the couch.

There were two bolts holding the pivot mechanism to the arm. The holes were counterbored more than halfway through the board, and relatively close to the bottom edge of the board. On top of that the wood was pretty feeble. Light and dry, kind of like cedar, but not, and with a flaw running right through the center. Flaw was not visible from the outside, but it showed up along most of the length of the split. Well, what do you expect for $200?

That big black thing in the forground in the second picture is the side arm of the couch, upside down. You can see the split edge along the top and the two bolt holes for attaching the pivot.

I took a small bag of tools, my cordless drill and several boxes of screws and nails. No telling what I was going to need. Forgot to bring glue, but Hiron's, the world's most amazing store, had some.

The scabbed on piece of wood would have looked better if we had made it the same length as the arm, but this was a piece I had and it didn't have to be cut. It would have looked better it we had painted it, too, but it will do for now. Don't know how long this couch is going to last. The front rail developed a small split when were putting it back together.

Update January 2017 replaced missing pictures.