A newly learned technique for repairing plastic fantastic.

 I have expressed this earlier, I am not impressed with the quality of "maritime" equipment sold to pleasure-boat owners. When we first upgraded to hot water in the transom shower, an Osculati unit was bought. These units proved to have rickety lids, that also easily bind and crack the weak hinge part. When this happened we lived with it for a while, untill at last we wanted a new unit.

Well, many of us are a bit lazy, and it was tempting to buy a new Osculati that would fit the old hole. Otherwise there could be a lot of work to change the hole shape, most probably including fiberglass and gelcoat filling. So, another Osculati was bought and fairly easily installed. You know what happened afer some years. A hinge broke due to binding. And truly, we know that the lids are delicate, and try to be very careful .

I tried to glue the parts of the hinge pin and repair the cracks with superglue, but it just ended up with the main part getting glued to the hinge slot. A mess. Lived with that for a while, but this autumn I took the unit home to see what could be done. 

It did not look easy. But then I remembered some videos I have seen on Youtube. About using baking soda and superglue to build plastic shapes. But some kind of mould would be needed. And I believe it is not easy to get superglue out of a mould. But superglue does not adhere well to some soft plastics. I had some plastic tubing called PEX in a size that was close to what I needed. So a part of such a tube was cut to a kind of mould in the shape of a small tray and the area around masked with tape.

 

Then my first experiment with baking soda and superglue was performed. 

It came out like this, quite promising I thought.

Next the hinge pin could be shaped.

The pin nearly finished, some paint and cleaning remaining. 

The remains of the original pin was drilled out from the hinge, and some additional space also ground out for the pins to make them rotate more easily. They must not have too much play, because then there is a risk that the lid will not fasten to the lower notch when closed.

I did also make a try to repair the cracks in the hinges with baking soda and superglue.

Time will show if the repair is any good.

I hope the unit will serve many years to come.