Friendly Plastic - rod repair, flies?

This is almost off-topic, but it's really cool stuff and I DID use it to get the bent reel seat on my new old Monty back in shape! I bought the stuff from the Stew-Mac instrument repair shop ( http://www.stewmac.com/ ), luthiers use it for making custom-shaped plastic cauls for clamping and pressing. I used it for clamps in refretting my banjo last winter, as the back of a banjo neck changes shape as it progresses up toward the nut.

I boiled a pan of water, put in some of the little 'friendly plastic' pellets, and turned off the heat. The white plastic turns transparent as it gets soft. I dipped it out with my fingers, and pressed it into the reel seat I removed from one of my modern fly rods. It hardens as it cools, and made a perfect impression of the proper curve in the reel seat. I then simply worked the thin metal of the reel seat back into shape with a 'burnisher' made from a brass rod, using the plastic piece as a form. Worked like a charm, the curve is a perfect for a reel now. The seat was badly dented.

Am now thinking about some streamer bodies using this stuff, It sinks in water, and is easy to mold with fingers since it takes a while to cool down and harden again. Much easier to deal with than epoxy!

It's infinitely re-usable -- I made the form for fixing the reel seat from the old cauls I made for fixing the banjo! Just put it back into boiling water and re-shape it.

ANYWAY, I was chortling after the repair about how useful this stuff was, so i thought I'd share it.

DAN

danbob,
You speak as though you are McGyver and these pellets is Duct Tape :wink: . Congrats on getting the reel seat straightened out.
I check that site and noticed the Preservation Polish w/no silicone. Looks to be something we boo workers might consider (aside from the bowling alley wax). Are guitars/banjos finished with varnish or poly?

Usually instruments are finished with laquer. Sometimes poly is used, but it's a pain to work with. Glad you found the Stew-Mac site, I buy quite a few things for fly tying and rod building there -- superglue and accelerator, pipettes for the superglue, oddly-shaped files and such. Polishes with no silicone are pretty crucial to instrument builders.
DAN