John Pollman
Member
- Messages
- 1,338
- Location
- Rochester Hills, MI
Hi folks,
I've got a "lazy Susan" in my kitchen. It's in the corner cupboard near the sink. It has two round plastic trays where we store canned goods and such. A while ago the upper shelf cracked and sagged. I just propped it up for a while and it worked but the crack worsened. I should have known better but I just didn't feel like dealing with it. Well it finally got to the point that I had to do something about it. I emptied the cabinet and removed the two plastic shelves. One was fine and I had planned on maybe using one as a template and creating one out of some plywood. I was going to take the mounting hardware off of the bad one and use it on the new wooden one. The shelves sat in the garage for a while and I just couldn't figure out exactly how I was going to do it. About a week ago, I was at a store buying some glue for a project and I saw something that gave me an idea. It was a gel based two-part epoxy. I've used epoxies for years but they're fairly thin and wouldn't be very easy to use in this case. I picked some up and headed home. Here's what I did.
The shelf is flat and fairly smooth on the top section and the bottom is a bunch of molded triangles to give it strength. When sitting flat on the bench, the crack was only about 1/16" wide at the most. I started by putting some masking tape on the top side and burnished it down pretty well. Then I mixed up a small amount of the gel epoxy and used a toothpick to spread it along the crack as best I could. I covered the entire length of the crack in two or three sessions because the epoxy sets up in five minutes. Once I had the entire crack covered on the back side I let it sit for about an hour to harden. When it was hard, I removed the tape from the top side. There was now a fairly thin crack but a little depression because the gelled epoxy didn't settle as much as I thought it would. I just mixed up a little more epoxy and using a popsicle stick I forced it into the crack and smoothed it out. It was pretty easy to do and I think it's going to work fine. This stuff is very hard and strong and it should hold up fine. I haven't reassembled it yet but I think I avoided having to make a whole new shelf. Here's a pic of the crack once it was repaired.
I've got a "lazy Susan" in my kitchen. It's in the corner cupboard near the sink. It has two round plastic trays where we store canned goods and such. A while ago the upper shelf cracked and sagged. I just propped it up for a while and it worked but the crack worsened. I should have known better but I just didn't feel like dealing with it. Well it finally got to the point that I had to do something about it. I emptied the cabinet and removed the two plastic shelves. One was fine and I had planned on maybe using one as a template and creating one out of some plywood. I was going to take the mounting hardware off of the bad one and use it on the new wooden one. The shelves sat in the garage for a while and I just couldn't figure out exactly how I was going to do it. About a week ago, I was at a store buying some glue for a project and I saw something that gave me an idea. It was a gel based two-part epoxy. I've used epoxies for years but they're fairly thin and wouldn't be very easy to use in this case. I picked some up and headed home. Here's what I did.
The shelf is flat and fairly smooth on the top section and the bottom is a bunch of molded triangles to give it strength. When sitting flat on the bench, the crack was only about 1/16" wide at the most. I started by putting some masking tape on the top side and burnished it down pretty well. Then I mixed up a small amount of the gel epoxy and used a toothpick to spread it along the crack as best I could. I covered the entire length of the crack in two or three sessions because the epoxy sets up in five minutes. Once I had the entire crack covered on the back side I let it sit for about an hour to harden. When it was hard, I removed the tape from the top side. There was now a fairly thin crack but a little depression because the gelled epoxy didn't settle as much as I thought it would. I just mixed up a little more epoxy and using a popsicle stick I forced it into the crack and smoothed it out. It was pretty easy to do and I think it's going to work fine. This stuff is very hard and strong and it should hold up fine. I haven't reassembled it yet but I think I avoided having to make a whole new shelf. Here's a pic of the crack once it was repaired.
