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Plastic Weld

Posted by JAW

Must have caught the fork guard on a stick, because when I noticed it was jammed up against wheel basically ripped off. Made a small effort to shop around for a replacement, started looking like being hard/expensive that's when me mate stepped in and said "Plastic Weld it".

He then preceeded to tell me a few tricks to doing the job.

"They use a little hot air gun, but a big soldering iron will do the same job. Clean up the edges of the work so it lines up, hold it together and run the soldering iron across the join. Work it in firstly from one side, then the otherside - so that the melted plastic is joined in the centre. Shaping your iron tip to give a 'V' will give a neat job."

Now there are many types of plastic and the plastic welders carry all the different poly* welding rods. For you, cut some little strips from somewhere else on the item as welding rods. Place them in the V and melt them in. The end job will be stronger than it was before. Oh, try not to sniff the fumes."

I followed his advice and although I was a bit hacky (probably used to much heat and charred the weld) it really works well. The end result is very strong join - perhaps a bit messy, but on an old bike I'm more interested in function than beauty!

picture
Plastic welded near the bottom. No, the cut on the top was made when it rubbing against the rim - not me gouging out some "welding rods" - but I did scrape off some small strips from the area.