Often projects at Devonport's Community Workshop involve working with wood, repairing chairs, sawing, drilling and glueing. However there are skilled craftsmen on hand able to tackle many and varied projects involving metal components.

On a recent caravan trip in Australia, our pot drawer latch would not open. After many attempts using a wire coat hanger to release the latch catch, the drawer was finally opened.

We found the brass rod that depressed the latch had snapped due to metal fatigue, probably after 4 years of road vibration.

This left the threaded end of the roof screwed inside the latch, and the broken off and all important piece floating around.

I wondered if this could repaired so took it to DCW and Derek Wye agreed to have a look at it.
Derek carefully drilled a tiny hole into the brass threaded leftover so he could insert a fine metal file to unscrew this from the latch.

With that removed, he used a similar dimensioned stainless steel metal rod, which is much stronger than brass. He then turned the required thread to it using a die set, cut it to length and voila latch fixed and far less likely to ever fail again!

Thanks Derek and the Devonport Community Workshop