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welding plastic
I bought a plastic welder from Harbor Freight back in March and finally got the chance to use it. Welding plasticis very easy, the hard part was hauling my compressor up from my basement to my garage.
I replaced the original Humminbird 100sx fishfinder on my 17 Bass with a new color fishfinder/gps unit; it's beautiful. I had to seal up holes in my transom where I removed the old transducer and on the top of my console and the top of the bow gunwale where I remounted my other fishfinder on a new swivel base.
When you are meting the plastic and laying in new plastic to fill a hole, the center of the hole has a tendency to mound up like a swirled ice-cream cone. I found that if I ran the flat of my bench chisel across the weld while it was still wet, that i could make it nice and flat and then use the chisel blade to shave the weld down flat. That technique saved me from having to sand down the weld and they came our real nice. I even went back and touched up my first hole with real good results, and the plastic did not stick to my chisel at all.
You don't need a huge compressor for this - I just have one of those small Porter-Cable pancake compressors and it ran the whole time I had the welder going, but it was able to keep up. You run a constant 4 psi through the welder while it is on.
Anyway, if you've been thinking about doing some welding on your boat but have been a bit apprehensive, don't be - it really is easy.
BTW, I got my welding rod from Dick at Merrit Marine he was super helpful and a real nice guy. I also bought some Rule from him and he threw in a bag of polyethelene powder.
woodNfish
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