Repairing a Recalled Step Stool

Posted Wed, 08/10/2011 - 11:28 by Benjamen Johnson

I read a few days ago over at ToolGuyd that all of the wooden step stools sold by Target were being recalled. According to the article there have been 26 reports of the stools collapsing, which didn't surprise me since I own one that has been falling apart for years. The only reason we aren't one of the reports is that I realized that the glue joints had failed and the stool was only being held together by dowels. So I would periodically pound it back together.

I commented on the post that I though that the reason the step stools are failing wasn't the design or the materials used, it was just poor glue application. I wasn't about to deal with a recall for something I could fix in less than half an hour in my shop, plus I wanted to prove my point, so I decided to pull the stool apart and glue it back together properly. Here are some pictures from that process.

Note: I'm trying out a new way of displaying a project. I'm still working out the bugs so bear with me. Also I have no idea how it'll look on the RSS feed so I apologize in advance to any people following me via RSS.