To fix a broken umbrella you’ll need a 6-inch piece of enamelled wire, enamelled so that it doesn’t rust in the wet. Not too thick a piece of wire that you can’t get enough wraps from it and not too thin that it is too weak to hold the stretcher together in a wind. Now, don’t go buying wire, we are meant to be recycling and reusing. Open up the mains cable in some old appliance you no longer use and look for some free wire in there.
You will also need a pair of scissors.
To fix a damaged stretcher match up the rivet holes of the two pieces of broken stretcher and pass the wire through the holes. Wrap the wire around and thread through again.
Keep wrapping wire until there is no more room for any more wire. Do two half-hitch knots (look the knot up here) with the wire. Trim the two ends of the wire to about half an inch in length. Twist the ends of the wire together and then tuck them away. Job done!