The Dale C. Maley Family Web Site

Repair of Math Class Scale

My sister-in-law, Judy, is a 5th grade math teacher.  She uses a scale to teach math. She came home over the holidays and brought her broken plastic scale with you....and wanted me to replace the broken plastic base with a wood piece. Here is the original plastic base and vertical arm:

Here is a close-up of the broken plastic base:

Here is the Google Sketchup of the new wood base:

One option would be to use either a chisel or mortising tool on the drill press to cut the square hole the vertical upright sets in. To avoid the long set-up time of the mortising attachment on the drill press, I decided to make the top piece from 3 boards glued together, which you can see in later photos. I used the radial arm saw to saw the tapers on each edge.

Here are photos of glueing up the new base piece:

As I tell my wife, a woodworker can never have too many clamps!

Here is the finished new base:

Closing Thoughts:

Glueing up the boards to make the square recess was easier than setting up the mortising tool. Hopefully, the math tool can be used for many more years of teaching!