cool idea, myself I have some Corian sample squares that fit the bill to attach to the end of the mallet. Without using the wife's kitchen tools. (Laughing)
Very cool.. I can think of a LOT of stuff that could be made from that. I've previously needed to turn some custom parts for fixing various things and have resorted to using epoxy blanks, however larger stuff is kind of difficult due to the heat generated when dealing with thick epoxy pours. HDPE would be ideal for some of those, so yet another alternative to add to the arsenal! Thanks for the info.
I haven't tried it yet but based on what I've learned, it would be challenging but possible. Probably not worth it IMO. The stuff shrinks quite a bit as it hardens and the challenge is preventing air bubbles. There is a youtube channel called, The Art of War, that has some excellent videos on recycled hdpe. The kid (he's 15), makes excellent videos, kinda like a teenage Matthias Wandel.
My wife thinks I'm crazy but I'm saving up plastic to give this a try.
My wife thinks I'm crazy but I'm saving up plastic to give this a try.
I got some in the toaster oven right now, and I'm not telling the wife
To the question.. I guess you could make runners, but why would you want to when there are so many alternatives available that are WAY easier. If you really have to have HDPE for your runners, run down to your local dollar store and pick up some cheap cutting boards and cut them into appropriate sized strips. I'm more interested in making blanks for turning on the lathe as a replacement for some of the stuff I currently resort to using epoxy for.
I was amazed at how much stuff around the house was made of HDPE when I started playing.. not just milk jugs and juice containers. Squirt bottles (like for mustard), generic screw top pill bottles, laundry detergent jugs, shampoo bottles.. and even those plastic bags you get at the grocery store! And with my limited experiments, you can use a metal form to get some pretty good results, like the heart shown in the picture above.. I used one of those metal cookie cutter things that I dug out of a drawer in the kitchen. No sticking at all and the finish is very smooth.
90% of the plastic we buy turned out to be #5, polypropylene.
I hear you Rick.. but I bet you get lots of those plastic bags at the store! Almost every bag I found was HDPE.. Grocery store bags, Harbor Freight, NAPA, Home Depot, Lowes, Ace Hardware, Old Navy, Target, Walgreens.. they were all HDPE. Unfortunately, it takes a LOT of them to make anything useful.. but the good news is they melt down really, really fast! I used an old never-dull can and wooden plug (wrapped in aluminium foil) to act as a piston and made a good sized chunk from some last night:
That chunk is about 1.5" thick and 3.5" in diameter.. just a bit larger than the size of a hockey puck.
Nice, I didn't know the grocery bags were HDPE… I've got a huge trash bag full of them in my "good intentions pile" to go back to the store to recycle. Looks like I may have to "borrow" the oven! Do you think the ink from the printed bags would create fumes at that temperature though? I work in the printing industry and some inks can be nasty… A lot of them are soy based now but I'm not sure about plastic bags. If they are oil or latex based it could get nasty. I'll do a little research first before fumigating my house…
Do you think the ink from the printed bags would create fumes at that temperature though?
I didn't notice any unusual fumes when I did the grocery bags, and I was baking for a couple hours.. I doubt there is enough ink to make much of an impact anyway.. I actually had worse fumes when doing the blue chunks in the first picture I posted above; those were laundry detergent jugs and they didn't wash out completely, so I had that nice fabric softener kind of smell coming from them.
FYI: In that first picture, the beige chunk was from milk jugs, the whiter one was from some generic pill bottles that the wife gets through a mail order prescription service, the blue were laundry detergent jugs like mentioned, and the multi color one was a mix of bottle caps, a mustard bottle, and some left over bits from the first few attempts. I folded, twisted and generally mashed it up to get the variation and layers of color.
Did you melt them in the can or on the sheet and then in the can. I think my wife would kill me if I used the sheet directly. I have a few old big coffee cans laying around. Did you say 350F for melting?
Did you melt them in the can or on the sheet and then in the can.
Melted in the can and the oven was set at 350F. I also tried with higher temps (up to about 375), which seemed to melt it a little more, but also made it even more sticky and harder to work with. The stuff turns into basically a really sticky chewing gum consistency, so it seems much easier to just melt in the form you want to use. A coffee can would probably work, but the ridges might make getting it out once it hardens a bit difficult. You might need to just consider it a one-time form and cut it off when done. The only issue I had with the can I used, which I didn't think about before starting, was the top 'lip' of the can is rolled inwards, which hung up the plastic when trying to remove it. I drilled and tapped a hole for a screw on top of the blank to thread in a screw and use it to pull past the lip, but that didn't work; so I used a pair of metal shears to snip off the top lip to get it out.
Any issues with air bubbles?
There were a few air pockets in the finished chunk, but not very many and they were very small. I used the blunt end of a cold chisel to mash it down while melting.. put a few layers in, let them melt, mash down, repeat. I'm pretty sure that if I had taken a bit more time, let it melt more and did some more mashing with something smaller like a punch, that I could have removed them all.. Smaller pieces also seem to work better than larger ones.. a shredder might be helpful in that regard.
When I posted this little thread, I had no idea it would grow to start threatening to unseat the stumpy nubs thread!
Sometimes a spark is all that is needed to start a forest fire
Looking forward to your technique Rick.. I have noticed that you get more little voids when melting in a form, mostly around the edges and really none in the middle. For the discs I made where i kind of rolled and folded them on the oven pan sort of like you would making bread dough, the interiors are completely void free and just the outside edges are rough.. Since you can work the material like you would wood, if you make the blank bigger than needed, you can cut and shape to size, which should produce good results.
I also found out that a lot of the plastic garbage bags are HDPE so I've experimented with them a bit.. I need to make a handwheel for my Makita planer/jointer that I'm restoring and was looking for some black material to use, which was what prompted me to look into using them. I figure I can make a round metal form larger than I need and then turn it to size/shape on the lathe which should work nicely.
Just curious. When the mallet it whack on the wood. Does it leave some plastic residue?
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