Was refurbishing a 10-year old bench with some new legs. The horizontal braces were milled with a bunch of notches and in good shape and I didn't want to remake them but I had both lag screwed and glued them to the legs. While looking at that I noticed I had shot a brad into it (small hole confirmed with metal detector) apparently to hold it together while the glue set and I applied the lag screws. Belts suspenders and safety pins - what was I thinking?
So I cut the legs off above and below the brace. Before the brad I was going to rip off the piece left glued to the brace along the glue joint but with the 18 ga brad I hesitated. Finally I changed my Forrest WWII blade out and put in an old B&D carbide blade and just ripped through the brad - no problem. I think I've cut through brads before but this is the first time I did it on purpose. Here's two of the cut-off cross section.
This is fence board cedar left outside in the rain and weather for 10 years. Interesting how the Rust spreads along the brad to the interior (gray stain). 1/4" lag screws also rusted all the way inside the hole.but the threads all intact you can see them. The glue held up pretty well. I was going to chisel the parts apart but was afraid the wood would break at places other than the joint and the brad reinforced that decision..
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