A-Frames for Dummy Swing Builders

Lets' see you cut this with a miter box!

Little, if anything, sparks greater joy among a couple of our search team members than finding some former high-school "journalist" and creative writing grad trying to describe DIY carpentry projects. It happens with amazing frequency in the former eHow.com niches, where much of the content bears little resemblance to useful instructions. In today's DotD nomination, we see how eHowian Joanne Robitaille made a mess of "How to Build an A-Frame Swing Set." We went back to the original at eHow to see all the goodies Leaf Group managed to omit when they migrated it from eHow.com to Hunker.com.

Robitaille, already a three-time DotD, cribbed her plans from HGTV: not, in our experience, the best source for detailed carpentry plans, although her source very likely influenced this cogent statement:

"When building an A-frame swing set, it is important to plan the structure to conform to your landscape and to place the posts no more than 10 feet apart, to keep the swing set from sagging." We'll get to that second clause later, but "conform to your landscape"? Really? Whatever the case Joanne strove mightily to copy the HGTV instructions without getting nailed for plagiarism, which may be why she changed "power miter box" in the original to "miter box"; though we might want to chalk that up to her ignorance of power tools.

Whatever the reason, Robitaille's alterations of the HGTV plans quite probably make her version unworkable at the best and unsafe at the worst. Let's compare:

	HGTV	Joanne
	Draw lines on the ends of four of the 4x4s and cut notches to accept the 4x6 top rail. Set the circular saw to a 12-degree angle to cut out the notches	Cut a 12-degree angle into the tops of four of the 4-inch by 4-inch posts using the miter box.
	Assemble the A-frames for the swing set. Set the power miter saw to 12-degrees and cut cross braces from the other two 4x4s. Clamp the A-frames together and secure with the nailer	Assemble the A-frames. Clamp the posts together with the cross braces in place. Nail the cross braces to the posts.
	Using an A-bar swing set bracket, bolt the legs together and set the top rail in the bracket, then bolt the top bracket to the top rail. Add diagonal corner bracing if necessary.	Bolt the legs together using A-bar metal swing set brackets. Set the top rail in place and check that the swing set is level.
	Drill holes through the sides of the A-frame posts into the cross braces and secure with screws	Drill holes through the sides of the A-frame posts into the cross braces and top rail. Insert screws and secure them tightly.

Neither HGTV nor Joanne mentioned that those "screws" should be lag screws; although at least one image on the HGTV site shows them, not to mention that HGTV's materials list calls for a socket set while Robitaille's does not. I'm not certain I'd want to trust my child's safety to "screws," even if they were "secured... tightly." She also ignores that the A-bar brackets whose name she copied from HGTV are packaged complete with lag screws...

Finally, HGTV made some silly comment about a 4-by-6 "sagging" over a span of ten feet, a fear Robitaille simply parroted. Surely they were kidding: a 2-by-6 can handle a ten-foot span without sagging, and this is a 4-by-6. HGTV should have known better, although we suspect our Dumbass of the Day would have had no idea how to figure that out!

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