Northwest Fishing Reports

I want to glue a hard plastic jar lid (like a peanut butter jar) to my Igloo cooler (softer plastic). I need it to be able to handle some stress.

I figure whatever I use I will have to scuff up both surfaces to get something for the adhiesive to grab on to. But what would work best?

Suggestions?

JB Weld?

Amx wrote:JB Weld?

That is one I was thinking of

I tried just rubber cement since I had some laying around and knew if it didn't work it would be an easy clean (it didn't).

I have some liquid nails but it specifically says not for plastic and I dont want to end up melting the cooler#-o

I also have some PVC cement I should probably try.

How about Gorilla glue? I've yet to find something it doesn't work on. That 10 ft rod I had pink fishing - the upper butt section was fixed with gorilla glue.

JB weld will not stick to some plastics. Gorilla glue might be a good one though. I've found gutter repair cement from Lowe's sticks to almost anything it seems.

Going to be a real hard sell gluing to the cooler. Polyethylene is not friendly to glue. Any of the glues mentioned will let go. A mechanical fastener would work much better.

PVC cement works by slightly melting the surfaces of the two pieces together. Probably want to steer away from it or test it on something you don't care about first.

I'd go with bolts or screws and silicone. I've done a lot of stuff with those two, and I've tried a lot of the ones that were mentioned. I'm a tropical fish keeper, and anyone with more than five tanks will tell you that if you want to save money you've got to DIY. A lot of the plastic cements bond by metling the plastics together in a weld, but when you're gluing two different types of plastic together those can come out iffy, and really won't hold. Iff it were styrene to styrene, it'd be different. Gorrilla glue expands quite rapidly and can deform some plastics and won't be perfect, but it usually stays watertight. But anytime you're working with something with give like that peanut butter jar, you don't want something to pliable or too brittle, and if it's going to have stress on it those would fail sooner.

What are you making? If I were doing it, I'd pre-drill holes, use stainless hardware to secure in place and seal it tight with silicone, which would look decent and cure up water tight. the screws can be sealed too so they don't rust.

Yep mechanical fasteners all the way. I don't care what type of glue you try on Polyethylene, it will not work.

natetreat wrote:What are you making? If I were doing it, I'd pre-drill holes, use stainless hardware to secure in place and seal it tight with silicone, which would look decent and cure up water tight. the screws can be sealed too so they don't rust.

Heh heh, those that know me know I like to "Gringo-ize" everything. So I wanted a rolling cooler to take with me bankside.

A couple wheels from Goodwill, a steel bar, a couple clips, drill a few holes a viola! One all terrain rolling cooler! After I took these pictures I replaced the outside cotter pins with pull pins so, if space is an issue I can pull the pins and wheels in about 10 seconds. The issue is that with the wheels, it does not sit level so I needed a 4" "foot" on the front to remedy that. BUT I also need it to be easy to remove like the wheels.
My solution is a plastic jar - glue the lid to the bottom/front/center of the cooler and screw the jar on. Then if I remove the wheels I just have to unscrew the jar and it will still sit level. I have a jar and tested it for weight capacity and stability and it works great, and in fact right now I just throw the jar inside the cooler until I get where I am going then pull it out and put it under the front of the cooler.

I am trying to do all mods without putting any holes in the inside of the cooler, so am trying to stay away from screws and such. I don't care how it looks as long as it holds, so a little melting is fine.

Sweet cooler mods Mark.
If you chose some short screws, then you'd only go through the outer hull and into the insullation, add a little caulk to the screw hole and it'd probably seal up pretty tight. You probably have 1/2" to 1" of room to work with I'd guess.

Went looking on my lunch hour - Bodo is right every glue I picked up that said it worked on plastics stated "except Polyethylene"#-o

What I ended up with is a 1/8" spring loaded Toggle/bolt
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&suge ... 80&bih=741
and a fender washer.
Cut Toggle Bolt down to about 1/2"
Drill 1/8" hole in jar lid
Drill 3/8" hole in outside shell of cooler
Slip toggle into cooler
Place washer on outside of lid.
Bolt goes through washer,lid, cooler, & into toggle.

I am thinking I will whittle a couple pieces of wood to fill in the gap on the inside of the toggle that will give it more surface area and lessen the chance of the edges cutting the cooler shell.

Thanks for all the input!=d>

I've been thinking of making up something similar myself! Nice mods.

For your next version, when you go to the goodwill for wheels. See if you can pick up an airline pull along travel bag like a carry on. You can probably get one there real cheap. Use the collapsible handle on the cooler and you can really break it down to fit in the car easy. Just a thought.:bom:

Or a golf bag cart.

AJ's Dad wrote:For your next version, when you go to the goodwill for wheels. See if you can pick up an airline pull along travel bag like a carry on. You can probably get one there real cheap. Use the collapsible handle on the cooler and you can really break it down to fit in the car easy. Just a thought.:bom:

The handle on this one is just like that (collapsable) right out of the store. You could probably go the Goodwill route and buy a cheaper cooler and travel bag and attach the bag's handle to the cooler, but then you would probably have to run your axle thorugh the interior of the cooler or attach it to the outside.

For testing purposes I put 6 full gallon milk jugs in mine, then another cooler on top with another 6 and it held up and carted around amazingly well! Even up a couple steps and through my gravel driveway!

I would like the handle a little longer though - I find myself running the tire into the heel of my boot while I am walking with it.

If I do another one I will use the Coleman MaxCold 50 quart roller cooler - it is more compact and has a better lid. I bought this one because it was cheap and I wasn't sure if I would destory it or not, but it is bigger than what I need (60 quart) and the lid hinge sucks.

Awesome job, Gringo! That's going to be very handy.

Maybe you should paint some flames on the side now!

I used one of these for years hauling computers and stuff around Seattle. Now it's relagated to cooler duty. It's a very strong little unit and cheap. Use it as is or chop the handle off, either way.

Hand Truck

You have some great Gringo-ized inventions. Nice work, Mark.