It wasn't me... I promise. It was my sister and cousins, at my birthday party, now I know my birthday was in March, but my sisters is in May, so my parents place the party somewhere in April and say its for both of us, which I'm fine with because I try not to spend much of my time in the spotlight. Anyway, the party was just about over, and in a clever move to stay a while longer, my sister and two of my cousins went outside for a while. They ended up, like always, on the swing set, which is about 20 years old. while they were swinging, the beam holding up the three swings snapped with a crack (or so I'm told) and the began to sink in the direction of down as the beam gave more and more. Eventually it snapped in 1/2 down the middle leaving the middle swing still attached to both sides.(my mom now refers to these three individuals as lard-butts)this left me and my dad the job of taking off the swings, and removing the beam from the support beams on either side. I don't really have a way to explain how it was secured, but I'll try. first off, there were two 4x4s (on each end of the pole) stuck in the ground and notched out at the top. so the 4x4 beam could be suspended. Then the two beams and the 2 notched support beams were stuck together with a metal bolt, which might as well have been part of the wood. to get these bolts out, i had to hold the beam above my head ass my dad hit the bolts with a hammer to drive them out. Once they got to a certain point, he had to insert a smaller tube, and hit that in order to hit the bolt. That worked great until we got 3 out of four done. On the last one, my dad somehow got the smaller tube around the bolt, and made a second hole parallel to the bolt. he kept hitting until he had split the support beam farther from him. He then realized his mistake, said some naughty words, and proceed to be unable to pull the 2nd tube out. eventually, he managed to get the bolt out with a pair of locking pliers (it had a head for him to grab onto (the bolt that is)) and he spent a few minutes attempting to pull the tube out, after his success, my work was over and he went to the store to grab a 12 foot 4x6, which him and my mom installed. He also had to the fix the broken support beam, which he did by drilling a few pieces of metal into each of the broken 1/2s and drawing them together.
Thanks Lard-butts ;)
Thanks Lard-butts ;)