[Boatanchors] OT: Results of the "Vinyl Repair" post

[Phil]

Hi,

Yesterday I posted a question concerning how to repair a 1 1/2 inch cut 
in a wheelchair vinyl armrest (new chair, my boo-boo in unwrapping it :(

Want to thank all who replied, it was a great help.  This morning I went 
down to Riley Auto parts and they had a small Vinyl repair kit by Permatex.

Bought it, brought it home and carefully read the instructions.  Seemed 
easy enough if I took my time.

The hardest part was tucking a small piece of the provided 'backing 
cloth' under the vinyl, using the thin plastic spatula provided, then 
glue it with the provided glue (clear like the 'Duco airplane cement' of 
old. The cut edges were already separating a bit due to the pressure of 
the foam rubber under it.  No way to close the cut so that the two edges 
would meet well, and still do the patch job.

After letting the cement dry 4 hours (per instructions) I proceeded to 
patch the hole and spread some of the patch material over the 
surrounding area. The patch material consists of a number of small 
plastic 'pots' containing different colors of the patch material, can be 
mixed for custom colors.  As the armrest is black that was easy, just 
used the black pot.

After smoothing the patch material of the repaired area the next step is 
to lay a piece of the 'textured paper' (several different patterns) over 
the patch material and then heat/rub it to cure the patch material.  
That is very important as heat is the curing agent!

To do this, they provide a special tool, a small wood dowel with a metal 
disk on the end.  They suggest heating the disk with a flatiron set on 
the highest heat, rub the disk over the paper and repeat until cured .

As I was doing this on my workbench, which has a SMD solder rework 
station with hot air gun, I used that to heat the disk, heating it, 
rubbing the paper, heating it and so forth.

Next step is to carefully peel the paper off and check to see if it's 
cured, if it isn't, repeat the above step with the paper.  In my case 
for the second round I chose to CAREFULLY heat the area directly with 
the hot air gun (no nozzle), keeping it far enough away so as to not 
melt the vinyl.  That worked very well.

RESULTS:  it doesn't look professional, the paper didn't do the best job 
of texturing it. Doesn't look bad, just not perfect.  Still better than 
the cut which likely would have grown with time. I REALLY think that in 
this case the results would have been better if I hadn't used the paper, 
but rather used the heat gun to directly cure the vinyl, it was very 
smooth and nice looking before I put the paper on it and did it their 
way. . .

-- 
73 From "The Beaconeer's Lair"
Specializing in DXing NDBs (Longwave Beacons)
Phil, KO6BB,  http://www.qsl.net/ko6bb/
KO6BB/B beacon, ~20W on 28.290 MHz, Ringo Vertical

HF/LF RADIOS:
HOMEBREW:   7 Tube+Rect 1v3 Regen RX for LF (built 2015)
Icom:       IC-7200 Xceiver, DSP IF & filters (~2015).
Kenwood:    TS-450SAT Xceiver, cascaded 250/125Hz Inrad filters.
10M Beacon: 2 x Realistic HTX-100's on 28.290MHz
SDR:        Softrock Ensemble II LF (built from a kit 2017).

ACC:   HOMEBREW  LF-MF Pre-Amp, 8Hz Audio Filter.
        HOMEBREW  4 Port Antenna Multicoupler, Feeds 4 RX's.
        
ANTENNAS: 88 foot Long Ladder-line fed dipole, 35 feet AGL for MW/SW.
           Active Mini-Whip, 36 Feet AGL for LF/MW/SW.
           37 foot "Low Noise Vertical", 11 feet AGL for LF/MW/SW.
           Cushcraft AR-10 Ringo Vertical, 14 feet AGL for 10M beacon.
Merced, Central California, 37, 18, 37N   120, 30, 6W CM97rh


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