Episode: 2038
Title: HPR2038: Attempting to fix a plastic boat
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2038/hpr2038.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 13:35:07

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This is HPR episode 2038 entitled Attempting to Fix a Plastic Mode.
It is hosted by Genre and is about 15 minutes long, the summary is using fire and various
bits of plastic Genre Attempts to repair a hole in a plastic
mode.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by An Honesthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15 that's HPR15.
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Hello HPR listeners, my name is Jezra and today I'm going to try and fix a hole in a plastic
boat.
Try.
A few days ago one of my neighbors asked me if I would like a boat.
She was working on a house, cleaning it up, getting it ready to be sold, and there happened
to be a plastic fishing boat there that needed to be disposed of instead of taking it to
the dump.
The neighbor asked me if I wanted it.
Shit yeah boy, I love me a boat, anywho, as far as I can tell.
This boat is made out of polyethylene and there is a small hole about a little less than
half an inch in the front of the boat on the bottom where obviously water is going to
get in and I need to pass the boat.
At first I thought I would use some JB weld because that fixes everything but JB weld
can get very brittle and this needs to flex just a little bit and as this boat was made
out of some sort of plastic I thought I could just heat up some other plastic and kind
of make a weld, do a plastic weld, bit of research on the internet showed me all about
poly welding where one takes a polyethylene product, cuts up pieces of another polyethylene
product, heats them up and sticks them together.
For my application I'm going to be using propane and parts of a plastic Folgers container
had coffee.
Let me drink in it, so here I am, out in the hot sun shine.
There is this plastic panel hole in it right in front of me and I need to clean up around
the area where I'm going to put this poly weld.
I have with me a random orbital sander that I purchased at the thrift store for six bucks
and I've got some hundo grit paper on there and I know what you're thinking, hundo is
Esperanto for dog and while you're correct I'm using hundo to represent the number 100 so
this is 100 grit paper and how I'm going to quickly clean up the area around the hole
so that I can start melting it and this boat was previously repaired and there's some
sort of weird putty stuck to it that obviously didn't do a very good job of fixing the
hole.
So I'm just cleaning this up real quick, alright, I've got a bunch of that crappy ass putty
off of there, so you've got to file somewhere around here and it will be a small hand file
to clean the hole up just a little bit, make sure there's a rough area for my other
plastic to stick to it.
If you've ever taken little green army boots and a magnifying glass and melted them, you
will probably aim on the person.
And you also know that melted plastic sticks very well to other plastic which is great
for swapping heads on little green army dudes.
So that's the principle here, I'm going to heat up the surface of the boat to the point
where it's about to melt and then I will heat up a extra piece of plastic that I have cut
from the Folger's container and just kind of stick them together, ideally they will
stick well, I have no idea what kind of plastic the Folger's container is made out of so this
could go completely shitty.
Okay, here we go, let's fire up some fucking heat here, that is some hot, so I have a small
propane torch and I am heating the area where the hole is moving the propane torch in
a circle so I don't completely catch anything on fire, I'm going to try and melt this plastic
down a bit, oh everything's melting just fine, oh, maybe not so fine but it's getting
the job done, except that it is not sticking together, so I may have two different types
of plastic here and shit, all right, what a bummer, all right, turning that off, I'm going
to turn off this recorder and go find some other plastic, I will see you in a little
bit.
All right, I have absolutely made everything really fucking work, so what I'm going
to do is try and do now, I'm going to use a different type of plastic, I have two plastic
flower pots that I've cut up and taken strips off of and hopefully this plastic will actually
stick to the plastic of the boat, chances are it won't and then I'm going to cry, and
that's okay, I've got fire, let's see if this works, I also have somewhere around here
a metal spoon from my kitchen that I'm using to push all of the plastic into place, that
way I don't have to use my flippant fingers, whoop, oh what do you know, plastic is sticking
to the spoon and not to the other plastic, well that's grand, basically I've probably
just borked this entire spoon and this entire project, oh man, this thing is terribly bad,
just go get the JB weld, John Culp, I don't know how you do recording while working
on stuff, but it's a skill I need to learn, oh and I just lit my boat on fire, alright,
the hell with this, well apparently my boat welding skills for plastic are completely
non-existent, so yeah, wow, now I have a massive gaping hole in the bottom of this boat, I'm
not sure I can even patch that with JB weld, it is a large hole, oh sigh, okay, I'm going
to let this cool down, then I'm going to sand it, and then I'm going to be a non-adient
and talk to my friend who has a, he works at a boat repair shop and I could probably get
something decent from him to help fix this, what a bondo would work, probably not, oh well,
not wanting to be too much of a quitter, I'm looking around for pieces of plastic I can use
to accomplish what I'm trying to do before I go and you know, contact someone who actually
knows what they're doing, anyhow, Sriracha hot sauce comes in a plastic container, so I'm going
to see if I can cook some Sriracha plastic onto this thing, oh shit no dude,
Sriracha plastic shrinks down like a damn shrinking tank, yeah, all right, more plastic,
what do we got, let's go find stuff, next, you know who doesn't like a quitter, I guess me,
anyhow, I found a piece of plastic that works, sort of kind of,
burn fire, so the piece of plastic that worked was a plastic pickle jar from the greatest
brinary in the world, Sonoma brinary up in Hillsburg, California, man they make some of the most
amazing pickles and sauerkraut that I've ever had, aside from homemade, they practically are
anyhow, the plastic from their pickle container seems to do a good job of melting and sticking to
things, amazingly I have not burned myself, not come plastic, and so I am taking chunks of this
pickle jar, laying the pieces on top of the hole, and then hitting them with the torch, I am
moving the torch in small circles so that I don't get too much concentrated heat,
and so far everything seems to be making a nice big messy pile of goo that is sticking to the boat,
which is the most important part that everything sticks to the boat, all right, I'm going to
do this layer of sticky goo and then make another one,
oh shit that boats on fire,
all right, got a pile of sticky goo,
yeah I can, using my metal spoon, I'm sort of smushing this around,
smush, and honestly I think it's doing a good job, I won't know until I'm in the boat itself,
nah since I have more pickle jar here, I'm going to continue breaking it into little pieces,
and I'm just sticking the pieces here, no, centimeter by a centimeter, little chunks,
pressing them into, oh yeah that's hot, pressing them into the melted goop that is currently sitting
on top of the hole, once I have a nice big pile on top of that goop I'm going to light the new
pile on fire, but I'm going to heat up the new pile and let it melt into the previous pile of
goop, this should give me a nice thick layer of plastic where the hole formerly used to be,
and I'll tell you right now it looks like fuck shit, and I'm fine with that because this is all
about function, not about fashion, and if there's one thing I am not, it's fashionable, except when
I need to go somewhere, then I'm fashionably late, mostly because I'm just late quite a bit,
always something to do and it distracts me, all right, got a nice new pile of plastic that needs
to get heated up, and really once this is done I should probably go to the store
and get some more pickles, because these pickles are fucking delicious,
Sour Crout is also top notch off the hook, good stuff,
darling natural probiotics, apparently if you go to the
Brynery, Sonoma Brynery, and take a tour they will give you a pickle at the end, so if you ever
happen to be in Hillsburg, California, check out Sonoma Brynery, and get yourself some damn fine
pickles and sourcrap, all right, let's see one more piece, oh here we go, that should do,
oh, not a piece, so I'll put that on there, just for a good measure, crank up some heat,
oh fire, okay, circle circle circle circle circle circle,
don't get too close, because you don't want to lighten up fire,
whoop, whoop, I'm running a low on propane,
yep, shit balls, dude, I'm out of propane, total half melted goop mess,
that due to the lack of propane, it's probably going to fall off, because I'm a negative
agency, yep, let's take some of this, now the hell of it, he's called good,
all right, I'm gonna let that cool down, maybe sand it in a bit, and then
pop in the boat and see if I float,
whoop wee, that is so ugly, I'm gonna take a picture of it,
so I've got the boat mostly in the water, I did go to the store and picked up another container,
pickles, because they're delicious, and now I'm walking down to the boat, go and give this a
proper test, all right, now because this boat's efficient boat and it's got a little
trolling motor on it, I'm just gonna put up this trolling motor, do I, what extra spare battery
you got? Okay, whoa, slow down there boat, so far the boat has not sank, however, in the boat's
defense, there is in the bow and in the stern, a large compartment filled with foam, which should
most likely keep this boat from ever sinking anyhow, whew, all right, I am not damn, I'm on a boat,
myself a nice little sit down, I'm floating,
oh, I'm floating, and I've got the little trolling motor going, it's a damn beautiful day,
how absolutely wonderful, turn off the motor, now let's go ahead and
cast out the rod, see if I can't catch something, and I'm going to call this a success and crack open
a cold beer, here's, thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio.
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