Garden chair repair

A diagonal brace at the back, simply screwed onto the back slats as near to the ends as you can get. Saves having to attempt to drill the metal sides. If you can use thin braces, then two would be better, in opposite directions, maybe screwed together in the centre. Screwing the braces to the slats at each crossing point would also help.

Much better idea and easier. Thanks for the tip.

Since it is outdoors, you could use a pair of these, overlapped like the white cross on the Scotland flag

Paint them with some suitable black gloss external paint and they won't be too obtrusive.

Being intended for cross-strutting flooring joists they can be bent as needed.

Mike Halmarack brought next idea :

Nor I.

My similar bench, has two 1/2" x 1/16" straps, which meet in the middle of the part you sit upon and are bolted to it. From there, they go down diagonally to fix to the horizontal cast into the legs, joining front legs to rear. It is very stable.

The only way using an horizontal bar, using a quite rigid bar, would be to have the bar threaded at each end. So that would be at each end - bar, nut, heavy washer, through leg, then another heavy washer and finally a nut. It would need to be tightened well, so the bar couldn't move.

Good option. Thanks

Thats the one I like best so far.

Much more demanding than the other options.

Bracing the slats will take some movement out but if the fixings to the metal sides are loose there will still be some movement. My suggestion is to remove the two bolts on the top and bottom slats then brace with diagonals attached by bolts at the same points.

Richard

Yes that looks like the way to go, thanks.

I have seen two braces from the slats to the bottom of the sides on each side on some designs. However I feel that if it was ok before then something is definitely missing! Brian

It was probably ok to begin with. No parts have been lost. just age and imperfect design taking it's toll.

Not helped by BMI 30+ and waist sizes of 40+ :-)