As a kayak angler at some point you will need to do some plastic welding to either fill in some holes that from where you removed a bracket or a wire harness that is no longer required, or maybe a small crack has developed somewhere in the kayak. To do this process you would need a soldering wire or a heat gun for softening the plastic material to fill in the crack or hole. Also you will need some plastic pieces that match the type of plastic that the kayak is made of. Note that I’m only referring to a rotomolded kayak.

For the plastic that I use for filling in holes is the plastic that is created when drilling or larger pieces when using a hole saw. This waste is collected into a zip lock bag for safe keeping. Another option to collect pieces of plastic to do a little trimming of plastic off from areas of your kayak for example where the hatches are positioned. These hatches will hide where you have done the trimming to collect the plastic for your project. The last option is to purchase plastic rods for the welding project. Here at Jackson Kayaks we offer plastic welding rods through our store (http://store.jacksonkayak.com/plastic-welding-sticks/) or at your local kayak dealer.

Now I will describe the plastic welding process. In my situation the process was to fill in a one inch hole where the Power Pole Micro Anchor wire harness exits the kayak near the Micro Anchor. Since this is a huge hole I positioned a piece of metal that is duct taped beneath the hole in the inside of the kayak so that the plastic pieces had a resting place.

Using a hot soldering iron I start by warming up the edge of the hole. I had the original piece of hole from that section so I would place that in hole and softening the edge of the hole. Once these edges are soft and I will start melting pieces to fill in the gap. The hot soldering iron will help you melt the plastic in the gaps. After I have filled in the gap; then start addressing the pilot hole from the hole saw using the same process.

One the gap and pilot hole is filled in with the plastic material. I will use the hot soldering iron to finish by using the hot tip to smooth out the repair job. The important part of the process is to ensure that the edges are heated to almost a melting point so that the edges and the melted pieces adhere to the kayak. If this does not happen then all you are doing it creating a plastic plug that can possibility push through the hole.

As you can see the process to repair a crack or hole in a kayak is really simple.