Wow, dude, your stiches are getting longer and longer! This last bucket definitely looks like unsalvageable, yet you managed to put it back together...

BTW, do you see any more problems with old buckets where the plastic is losing its elasticity?

That mop wringer looks like a fighter to me, Zombie, and it'll probably end up being the foremost example of just how effective your plastic welding can be given how punishing its regular use tends to be.

Pails, by and large, have it good by comparison, so what if they're a little disfigured? They never expected anyone to care and yet here you are bringing them back from the brink when no one else would bother. "No landfill for you while I'm here, little ones..." I can almost hear you croon underbreath.

I don't know about proper filling, but there's something inherently fulfilling about that, let me tell you! 

15 hours ago, Space Voyager said:

Wow, dude, your stiches are getting longer and longer! This last bucket definitely looks like unsalvageable, yet you managed to put it back together...

BTW, do you see any more problems with old buckets where the plastic is losing its elasticity?

We'll see if the bucket leaks, that will be the litmus test. I'm not 100% happy about the quality of the weld either, but maybe with the fill it will get better As for old buckets losing their pliability, I haven't seen that at least with the buckets we have. Normally, plastic just gets brittle as it ages, and for the most part that is true. Our buckets hardy ever see sunlight (specifically UV light) for any extended periods so that kinda keeps them in decent shape. These cracks I've been fixing are due mostly to wear and tear and a design flaw in the bucket molding process, although, I can't discount the possibility that they are getting brittle due to age.

Did a little shopping today at the hardware store:

Got a can of dark green spray paint to cover over some slightly rusty easels which I'll cover another time. Also got a can of gloss royal blue oil paint for the metal cart. The newer can is on the bottom, older on the top. Same name, same code, maybe a different color? Dunno, but we will find out soon enough. Picked up some more foam roller covers (not shown) and a gallon of glass cleaner concentrate. Been using this brand for a number of years now because it's strong (even diluted) and goes a long way.

Anyhow, back to plastic welding. Our flower cutter in the backroom sits on top of a Rubbermaid square trash can. It was used when we got it so it had some wear. Due to misuse or overloading, it's starting to show it's age. Problem one is a crack along one side:

And this is what it looks like after the zipper weld:

This plastic has a fairly low melting point so I had to be really careful not to punch through. Kinda have to use a light touch - no pressure on it whatsoever. While waiting for that area to cool off, I worked on the top corners since they were cracked up too:

This corner has a cracked off corner, so I just fixed the cracks along each side.I'll deal with the missing part later. First I have to find a sacrificial plastic which will work as a fill. Once the large crack on the side cooled a little, I was able to smooth out the zipper weld:

The inside area of the crack also needed to be zipper welded:

I was able to smooth the weld out but didn't take a pic of it. Anyway, this was the initial round of fixing, it's going to need lots more work.

- Zombie

"Superior durability, Premium quality" - I like the ring of that. But I guess the real question then is who paints their paint cans, Zombie? 

As you've spotted, at least on the outside that Gloss Royal Blue can mislead one into thinking it's not staying the same in tone over time. Shopping by reference should, in theory, keep you safe, as a visual pick definitely won't do.

As for that square trash can it certainly looks to have been a bit down in the dumps. Plenty of bruising on display too but it appears to be a good, stiff sort of plastic, even if it melts quick.

You're getting even more ambitious, what with moving towards more serious grafts, like that missing corner. Going out on a limb and putting in a bent rim?

Just you be careful as that sort of fine work strikes me as a burns magnet and can be something fiddly to do with gloves.

9 hours ago, Thorondor said:

"Superior durability, Premium quality" - I like the ring of that. But I guess the real question then is who paints their paint cans, Zombie? 

Seems obvious to me, but someone color blind perhaps? I just hope the paint inside matches. Actually, it doesn't matter too much since a full can will cover the entire cart easily.

9 hours ago, Thorondor said:

You're getting even more ambitious, what with moving towards more serious grafts, like that missing corner. Going out on a limb and putting in a bent rim?

I don't know how I'm going to handle that fix yet. Gotta think on that a little. I could graft a piece of plastic in there assuming I find a surrogate piece with roughly the same melting point. Or I could melt in some screening and then build up the plastic corner by depositing the molten plastic on the screening until it's covered. The second option would take more time.

--------------------

About a month ago, one of the local funeral homes gave us back some wire easels which are used for standing spray arrangements. I forgot to take a pic of what those arrangements look like, but I think you'll get an idea fom this pic I took a couple years ago:

Anyhow, some of the easels were showing some rust so I wanted to fix that so they were usable again. Here's what a typical used easel looked like:

Not really green anymore - it's more of a teal blue than anything, and there''s rust spots here and there. This is where that green spray paint comes into the picture. I put 2 easels on table made with two sawhorses, chucked on a couple boards and cardboard (you may recognize these pieces, I kept them from years ago), then sprayed just the front side:

That can did 7 easels total and cost $11. New easels cost anywhere from $6-12 depending on size so figure $1.57 on paint plus my time, totally worth it. Probably will get another can to finish the rest although not all of them are rusty.

Had a little time this afternoon to paint the sides of that rolling blue cart with some of the older blue paint. This is what it looks like currently:

Better! I did the sides first because I'm going to be rolling the shelves at a later date and since it'll probably drip on the sides anyway, I figured that I'd roll everything with the new color just in case there's a difference. Oh, there's a bunch of those used easels in back of the cart.

- Zombie

Weighing your options for the square trash can corner gap bridging, it kind of comes down to how lasting you want it to be, Zombie - I imagine the more time demanding one is likely to have your fix last longer.

Either way, when putting that thing back in its place of use, I'd turn that corner towards whatever is the less hazzard-prone direction.

As for the easel rejuvenation on the cheap? Where material cost is concerned, sure. But, if we're splitting hairs, upper management could still argue the manpower expense could have been lessened. Highly experienced senior staff like yourself should delegate such unskilled work to lower income per hour workforce elements.

I'm just elbowing you here of course - prior knowledge tells me you don't want any of the ladies out there anywhere near a can of spray paint, lest they become distracted or get creative with what they're pointing it at. 

Jesting aside, the fresh blue looks good and true on the rolling cart. Proceed!

11 hours ago, Thorondor said:

Weighing your options for the square trash can corner gap bridging, it kind of comes down to how lasting you want it to be, Zombie - I imagine the more time demanding one is likely to have your fix last longer.

Either way, when putting that thing back in its place of use, I'd turn that corner towards whatever is the less hazard-prone direction.

Worked on the trash can today again. First up was trying to fix the bottom since there were areas that were worn open. I found that the normal black plastic bucket material was semi-compatible with the plastic of the garbage can. The areas that were worn down were quite thin so it was a little fiddly trying to get enough plastic to bridge the gap without melting through. Think I did a pretty good job overall and finished 3 corners at least:

I'm using the duct tape to hold the side tighter to the bottom so that the plastic can set up without pulling apart. Haven't poked around on the weld to see if it will hold, but the ends aren't curling up which is a very good sign that it's bonding.

As for the missing corner, I ended up using a wider strip of sacrificial black bucket and then tacking that into place. Once one side was cool and solid, I bent the plastic around to the other rim and tacked that into place. When that cooled, I molded both sides to the gray plastic of the garbage can and then added some more to the bottom of the corner since the black plastic was thinner. Oh, and to fix the top, I just melted black plastic blobs and applied that to either side till the hole was closed up. Took a pic of the corner along with what is left of the strip:

Seems pretty solid to me, but it's going to need more smoothing and possibly modifying to fit in the frame of the flower cutter. Took a pic of the bottom rim of the bridged corner:

Perfect? Nope! But I think it's functional at least. Hopefully I can get the last corner of the bottom filled tomorrow. What's left after that? Well, I think I need to add a ridge of plastic along the perimeter of the bottom so that the middle doesn't scrape along the ground when the can is filled with garbage.

11 hours ago, Thorondor said:

As for the easel rejuvenation on the cheap? Where material cost is concerned, sure. But, if we're splitting hairs, upper management could still argue the manpower expense could have been lessened. Highly experienced senior staff like yourself should delegate such unskilled work to lower income per hour workforce elements.

I'm just elbowing you here of course - prior knowledge tells me you don't want any of the ladies out there anywhere near a can of spray paint, lest they become distracted or get creative with what they're pointing it at. 

A couple points, if I may. First, there is nobody around the shop that can apply the paint quicker and more evenly than I can. So it'll take someone else longer to apply the stuff and they will end up using more paint to get even coverage. And that costs more money, not to mention that whoever is doing it will have to walk outside to switch the easels out when dry, whereas I'm closer since I was painting the cart in the small garage anyway. Secondly, I believe I get paid less than the designers not to mention there aren't other employees in my area of expertice with less seniority to delegate the work to. It's just me.

- Zombie

Some examples of good cornering right there, Zombie. 

Seeing what you had to mend, and how thin the plastic is at the bottom of the trash can, you've done quite well.

I'd go so far as to say exceptionally well in that missing corner reconstruction. You've rebuilt that rim with a good curve in what looks like a very solid layering.

Further protecting the bottom with an added ridge of plastic is a great idea too. The thing is, you're going to have to do extremely even work throughout for it not to wobble.

Your points regarding easel spray painting - fair enough.

Man, them hens don't stand a chance in darnation with you on watch, do they?

Had to do an emergency fix on the bumper of one of our vans today. There was a pretty good sized crack from someone hitting who knows what:

Fiberglass bumper, so it's the perfect theater to showcase my plastic welding talents. Ahem. First I had to investigate how to get this crack flush again. I figured that since the bottom piece of the horizontal crack was sticking out and I couldn't push it back into place that I would stick the hot soldiering iron tip in the crack to widen it. Worked good and it allowed the vertical crack to sit flush again. Now that both areas were even I sanded the paint off as much as I could and zipper welded the two sections together. Then it was just a matter of smoothing it out and filling in the low area with some sacrificial black bucket plastic:

Sanded that down and this is what it looked like:

Put a couple coats of black paint on it and it should be good to go. Sorry, forgot to take a pic of this, I'll do that tomorrow. With that out of the way, it was back to the square garbage container. Finished filling in that last corner on the bottom. This is what it looked like on the inside:

I was happy to see a lot of black plastic inside as that meant that it should hold together better. Tried digging around the weld on the outside bottom to see if any of it would come loose. Other than a few small flaps (which I welded back down) it was all tight. I was originally going to add a ridge along the perimeter of the bottom but decided last minute to just do the corners for now (would require lots of work and I needed to get the thing back up for Monday). Here's what one corner looked like:

Good enough for now me thinks. If I have a crummy weather day I can mess with it some more. The edges will need to be much higher and maybe thicker too. I was thinking that I could always graft on a piece of plastic in the center to help protect the bottom more.

As for the corner of the top which was missing, my transplant was successful but wouldn't win any beauty pageants. It was still pretty rough so I spent a little time rasping it and sanding it down. Gotta check this out:

Friggin' amazing! It's literally perfect. Probably my best work yet! It's a little wider than the other corners so the flower cutter frame is tighter when seated, but that actually may be a good thing. The bottom of the rim is a little rough yet, but that can be fixed with some more sanding. Best of all, it looks like the black plastic bonded to the grey. Really happy about that.

- Zombie

I'm afraid SC will be attacked from the plastics industry - and we know that is basically oil industry - and we don't want to get on their radar. Reusing the same plastics instead of buying new one, new car parts, new buckets... Bad for their business. Are we sure posting this is safe?!

Really cool, the lot!

I've got to say, it was a little bit of a hair-raising business to see you throw yourself into a van bumper fix like that, Zombie. You must've been pretty confident you could stick the landing outright. And simply resorting to the very same black bucket plastic, no less. Go, you!

Speaking of which, that new corner of the square garbage container turned out surprisingly great. Colour aside, it almost feels like it belongs there. Challenge overcome - be proud, it's deserved!! 

3 hours ago, Thorondor said:

I've got to say, it was a little bit of a hair-raising business to see you throw yourself into a van bumper fix like that, Zombie. You must've been pretty confident you could stick the landing outright. And simply resorting to the very same black bucket plastic, no less. Go, you!

Speaking of which, that new corner of the square garbage container turned out surprisingly great. Colour aside, it almost feels like it belongs there. Challenge overcome - be proud, it's deserved!! 

Agree completely. Though hair raising? What does he have to lose? It is plastic (well, fibres and resin), so even if you F up, it won't rust. On an old car (like mine), nobody will even notice, however big the hole.

I own a Fiat Ulysse 2009, so, however incredibly useful and durable it turned out, it is no beauty queen and I'd probably not even care about that crack...

Well, the hairy part is you're basically risking an experimental fix (widening the crack to see if alignment was restored, etc.) on a vehicle that's not yours, or that old.

Should you mess things up and then the van is taken to be serviced at the brand and they say, "Hey, had this not been done we could've restored it seamlessly here, with the right equipment. Not possible anymore".

Naturally, I'm also very aware that these days they'd likely very cheekily and straight out just say you should get that replaced with a new bumper. 

By the way, my father had a Fiat 128 for more than 20 years and had it not been for the severe rusting it would have gone on fine, as the engine was running great still. Towards the end though that car had so many bitumen fillings the extra weight was costing him on gas, so it had to be retired. 

The reason I tackled the van project was because the bossman asked me if I could address it. We've had the service centers plastic weld bumpers/front grills for us before whenever we had a crack, so they can do it with passable results. It's just that they charge an arm and a leg for the work. So,  yeah, if they can fix it, then I can too. And I don't quit when the job is only passable, I do some more steps to make it look decent.

Really, there isn't a giant chance of messing up so bad that the bumper would be completely ruined (at least for me there isn't). I started out by assessing the crack and what it was doing, and then formulated a fix. This plan was relayed to bossman and then I went ahead by carefully doing a plunge into the top part of the crack to see if that would allow the piece to sit flush with the bumper. It did, so I kept going. While doing so I was constantly looking at how the bumper plastic was reacting to the heat and melting. The bumper appeared to melt at approximately the same temp as the black bucket material so I used that for fill. Anyhow, took a pic of the repaired area with paint on it the other day:

I do see some porosity, so I may just sand off the paint and apply some Bondo, sand that flat, then repaint. From 5 feet away though, it looks fine just the way it is. Also, directly next to the left side of the repair the bumper is dented in there yet. I guess I could fill that in with more sacrificial bucket plastic. Or I could Bondo over it. Not sure which method would be better, I'm assuming that the less Bondo used, the better.

- Zombie

On 8/24/2025 at 5:30 PM, Thorondor said:

 Towards the end though that car had so many bitumen fillings the extra weight was costing him on gas, so it had to be retired. 

LOL!!!

Damn, Z, superb job! I mean ok, I'm sure a well paid mechanic that does this for a living for 20 years could do better but DAMN I sure couldn't! As my friend says: "Too good for your skill level!".

Now that you've clearly outlined the circumstances and all the steps you had taken throughout, Zombie, that's something perfectly par for the course.

Before I was also - given your entirely cursory description on what might have caused the damage - kind of envisioning a scenario where possibly some other employee had come to you on the hush-hush, after ramming the bumper against something somewhere, and trying to have things fly under the radar without being shamed (or punished) for it by management.

As it is, though, all there is to it is a job very well done on your part and when you've gone the distance nothing more needed than some spit and polish to have it back to new! 

7 hours ago, Space Voyager said:

LOL!!!

Damn, Z, superb job! I mean ok, I'm sure a well paid mechanic that does this for a living for 20 years could do better but DAMN I sure couldn't! As my friend says: "Too good for your skill level!".

Oh, I'm positive you could do it SV. I had basically 0 skill in plastic welding before this year (well, that's not entirely true as I tried my hand at it a few years ago with little success). Watch a few YouTube videos, and practice as often as you can. It's not exactly rocket science. Honestly, it's a good skill to gain as you'll find all sorts of applications these days because almost everything is made of plastic. There probably aren't many skilled plastic welders out there either.

 

6 hours ago, Thorondor said:

Before I was also - given your entirely cursory description on what might have caused the damage - kind of envisioning a scenario where possibly some other employee had come to you on the hush-hush, after ramming the bumper against something somewhere, and trying to have things fly under the radar without being shamed (or punished) for it by management.

Nah, us drivers are completely up-front with bossman if we caused damage to a van (actually, I think he caused this crack). It is what it is. Accidents happen. Luckily I only caused a little dent in one of our older vans back in 2016-ish? The thing with me though is that I'll try to fix it - even damage caused by a different driver. It doesn't make sense to file a claim with insurance if it's something minor (like this crack) so if I can fix it on the cheap we can keep our premiums low for the serious stuff. Yeah, there was a few times where our old driver had a minor fender-bender and I fixed it without getting the bossman involved. Most times I fix the problem so good that there's nothing to see and he's fine with that.

- Zombie

I kinda got side-tracked on a different project today. Was dumping the garbage out of our two round garbage cans and noticed the top of one was cracked. You may remember I tried fixing it a few years ago by using epoxy. Apparently the top fell off a few times and broke along the epoxy-filled crack:

And here's a closer pic of the issue:

Well, if epoxy will not work, then how about plastic welding? Had to do a lot of sanding to get the joint down to raw plastic (it's technically fiberglass). I also tried to pick out as much old epoxy from the crack as I could before starting the plastic welding:

After I zipper welded the crack, I smoothed it out:

Didn't need to add any fill either. Just sanded the area to get it smooth again. Time for the inside:

You can see the hole I drilled in the top a few years ago to prevent the crack from propagating farther - it's still filled with epoxy. After smoothing that out, I primed the top and sprayed it with gray paint again:

Can't even tell I did plastic welding on it - totally seamless. While inspecting the inside of the other top, I noticed that it was cracked in a couple spots:

The longer crack is on the right and the shorter one is to the left (it's the darker line). So, I'm going to have to fix that too. Another issue you may have noticed in the first pic is that the flapper for the opening on the first lid was broken off ages ago. I kept it luckily, but must've lost the part that connects to the lid. I'll take some pics of that tomorrow.

- Zombie

Very long recurring longitudinal crack - what the heck? No sweat, Zombie's got that! 

No external scarring. Seriously, just look at the new sheen on that polished dome.

Number two now on the queue and all jazzed up to go superfly too!!

Besides the garbage cans, I also worked on that gray pail. I pulled off the wire mesh on the outside and filled that low spot with black sacrificial bucket plastic instead. I was worried that it might melt through because it's a higher melting point plastic, but I was careful and got it to work:

I also added a little fill on the inside and fixed the crack:

This needs to be leak tested yet obviously. Here's what the mop wringer looks like:

And here's the inside all fixed up:

I consider the plastic part of the wringer complete now. Since I had to take some of the rusty metal bolts and connecting rods off to access the crack, I started to fix them up.

Oh, I caulked around the threshold of the door that I remade. There was still a lower area on the left side where the Bondo didn't hold. I didn't have enough of that left to fill that part in so I got some hydraulic cement at the hardware store because I needed something fast setting. The directions called for 3 parts cement to 1 part cold water. I used 3 parts cement and 1 part bonding agent to hopefully get it to stick better. Here's what it looked like:

I actually got that area pretty smooth now. Needs a few days to cure completely, than I can prime and paint and cross my fingers that it doesn't go bad so soon.

- Zombie

I know I'm seeing things again, but it's... shall we say, a pail with a tail. Now you can tell which part is the back of it and which is the front. 

The mop wringer, in turn, is just living its better life. All fixed up where it matters and dealing with no pressure, most assuredly praising your name, Zombie.

As for the treshold, I'm afraid it's as aptly named as something could be - representing the ever shifting state it shall remain in. Holding for now; room for your care tomorrow. Living on the edge!

So this is what the inside of the top to the garbage can looked like. I jammed a putty knife in the bigger crack so you can see how long it is:

You can also see the smaller crack on the right and it should be pretty obvious that the screw collar on the right is also cracked. That's not good. First things first though is plastic welding the cracks on the outside of the top and smoothing it out:

There were some low spots on these welds but they look pretty clean overall. Next up is plastic welding the inside including the screw collar:

This turned out better at least. To fill in the lower spots on the outside I just used some of that sacrificial black bucket plastic and dabbed that in there. After it cooled, it needed some sanding to get it smooth:

There were a couple holes in the back (for what they were used for, I don't know) but they were filled in with black plastic too:

Did a lot of scraping around the rim too. Then I primed the thing along with painting the hardware on the mop wringer (just used black paint on that):

The van with the cracked bumper is in the background. So yeah, a lot of work went into this so hopefully it'll hold.

- Zombie

This surely goes beyond the proverbial "taking a good stab at it", doesn't it, Zombie? 

You seemingly went a bit deep with that garbage can's dome scraping too but it has proven adequate as you've managed to reform its surface quite exemplarily.

Adding in mop wringer painting & assembly, van bumper revamp - all in all a veritable showcase of your multidisciplinary recovery work!

Just stumbled upon this... If you, instead of physics, choose chemistry...

The article says that styrofoam in acetone is a good glue and in gasoline it is a sealant. 

Now, styrofoam is an inflated polystyrene, so IMO in both cases you get more or less plastic (after the solvent evaporates), but as a sealant this should work.

I have my doubts about that working SV, PS isn't the strongest plastic out there and it can be quite brittle. I will also mention that polystyrene isn't what the buckets are made of so that means it wouldn't stick.

Anyhow, back to the garbage can lids! This is what the inside of the top is supposed to look like:

Well, imagine there are no cracks in it, okay? There are two screw collars where the flap assembly is attached to the top. So for this one, I fixed the crack in the right collar so that should be good to go. And this is what the assembly looks like installed:

This one works great, no problems! The other top suffered significant damage which broke off one screw collar leaving only a stub behind and the other was hanging by a thread:

And a different angle:

I never recovered the broken off collar so that was gone. The other one (or what's left of it at least) is still present, but broken off below the surface. And obviously half is missing - I didn't recover this piece either.  You can see that these collars are not solid plastic for some reason, they are porous. Don't ask me why, it seems like a serious design flaw.

Another thing that was missing was the piece holding the flap assembly to the top (see second pic). I never found this piece. Without this critical part, the flapper can't be attached to the lid. Thought about creating one out of plastic for a nanosecond but that would've required a ton of work. How about wood though? Certainly possible. Found a piece of wood almost the exact size, cut it to size and then modified it to approximate the other piece. This is what the top looked like:

And side:

And bottom:

Not perfect, but functional at least. This piece will not see too much weathering, but humidity could be a concern so I soaked it in wood preservative for a couple hours:

It's my homemade concoction of 1 part boiled linseed oil, 1 part oil-based commercial wood preservative and 1 part paint thinner (the original recipe calls for turpentine instead of paint thinner which I didn't have when mixing this batch up). After soaking, I hung it up to dry over the weekend. Great, so I can cross this off the list. Before heading out, I primed the threshold of the door:

That hydraulic cement really cures fast so I think that was enough time to set up properly. Before priming, I sprayed the hydraulic cement patch a couple times with water just to make sure that the cement wouldn't wick the moisture out of the primer. I have since put a second coat over this because there were some pores that needed to be filled in.

Next up on my list of things to fix was the garbage cans themselves. I'll get into that nightmare more next time.

- Zombie