A while back I bought a couple of folding steel tube director’s chairs from 24mx that were on special offer at £21.99 each, partly because of the price, and partly because, based on their picture, it looked like I could just remove the back piece by cutting through the rivets.
When they finally arrived, the reality was slightly different and I was going to have to cut off the tops of the rear posts.
No big deal, I have several plumbing pipe cutters that I can potentially use.
Removal of the back fabric is simple enough just by removing two screws and then sliding it off.
Next I removed the plastic end caps and saved them for later.
The tubing turned out to be 22mm steel, which meant I could use one of my smaller pipe cutters that allowed me to cut the tubing low and level without needing a hacksaw, you just put it on and keep turning until the cutter makes its way through.
De-burr the holes and re-insert the plastic end caps saved from earlier.
Next I cut the stitching on the seat on either side to leave just the frame, the covers on the arms were just held on with velcro so came right off exposing some foam padding beneath.
Then it was simply a case of zipping the new sleeves in place and the new trestles were complete.
In total it took no longer than 10 minutes per trestle and most of that was picking out the cotton from the cut stitches on the seating fabric as I wanted to keep it for possible future use.
Total cost: £43.98 for the chairs and £12.00 for the sleeves, so £55.98 for the pair, which is substantially less than the cost of new, almost identical trestles at around £100.00 or more for a pair from any of the normal rowing supply shops.