The Many Uses for a Soldering Iron
First I’d like to say, if you are going to use a soldering iron, you have to be extremely careful! They heat up fast and can burn anything in a flash. You should also make sure when you are finished using your soldering iron you put it up to cool down some place it’s not going to burn someone or anything around it. When I have finished with my soldering iron, I run cool water over it and set it aside on the sink to finish cooling down.
Soldering irons are the greatest tools around because superglue doesn’t fix plastic things, even though it claims it does. I got sick of wasting my superglue and my time attempting to fix things made of plastic and wondered if there was another way to fix plastic with something else. Well, while on a 6th month holiday, I had my soldering iron because I had to solder my laptop. My husband had a knack of throwing the large water bottle into the small refrigerator it was only a matter of time before the door tray broke right off! I went into panic mode, we needed the refrigerator door tray as it was a mini and hardly any room in it as it was. I wondered to myself if I could melt the door tray into place, so I took the soldering iron and heated it up and then pressed through the plastic melting the door tray to the back of the refrigerator. This was the first time I had made use of the soldering iron, but it by any means was not the last!
I discovered I could use the soldering iron to fix old cracked plant pots. Plant pots get cracked with age and weather. Using a soldering iron to melt the pieces together made the pots look like new and no longer leak! The problem with using a soldering iron to melt plastic is you have to be extremely careful as the plastic you are heating up can burn yourself too.
Another good use of a soldering iron is you can use it to poke holes in the bottom of your plant pots to help them drain.
Trash bins that have cracked and you don’t wish or can’t afford to replace them you can melt it to repair those too.
If you have a hamster you may have run into trouble with the tunnels fitting together correctly. You can use the soldering iron to melt them together. Just remember they aren’t going to be able to pull apart once you do this, and try to not leave sharp edges so your hamster doesn’t get hurt.
Other items that I have repaired myself and you can too are: plastic lunch boxes, vacuum cases, children’s toys, DVD cases, VHS cases, plastic canvas items, shoes, and any sharp edges of anything plastic. Anything that’s made of plastic, you can melt with a soldering iron. You can even create and repair junk jewelry.
