Melting Plastic

[Duff Beer Man]

Anyone ever try and melt plastic into a liquid? I was doing some binding work, and there is a noticeable seem where two strips of binding meet. i was wondering if anyone knew how to melt down plastic to a liquid of where i could use it like a filler and fill the seem.

[ihocky2]

I haven't done it myself, but just read about it in Dan Erlwines book on finishing. There is a product called binding melt that you can rub on and melts the seems together. The other way he said was to dissolve a piece of binding in laquer thinner. My guess would be to make it just viscuss enough to be able to spread it.

[Mattia]

I believe this only works with celluloid plastic binding, using acetone or lac thinner. Since your binding is probably ABS, you're out of luck.

[ryanb]

Acetone would do the job easily on celluloid binding. If you have ABS, you need a solvent for that, which can be obtained in a number of places -- or just go to the hardware store and get some ABS glue, which would work quite nicely.

[rokeros]

"Plastic" can be a very general term. There are two main types of plastics, thermosetting and thermoplastics. One which will stretch and retain its shape when heated and cooled down again and I forgot which one, but one type can't melt.

So before trying to melt the plastic, it is best to understand which one you have and if it is suitable for fixing the bind seem.

[Duff Beer Man]

Its pearliod plastic, so i dont know which one it qualifies for.

[SwedishLuthier]

Acetone works fine on modern ABS bindings too. I use it all the time. It doesn't get completely liquid. More like soft goo. I use it all the time to get my lap joints invisible.

And that’s not cheating. That’s being smart

[Duff Beer Man]

freaking worked wonders guys. Thanks a lot.