Thanks to a rocky ditch in Scotland and a very trusting Nathan Butler I spent a few hours this evening welding a Liquid Logic Stomper back together.

The split in the hull was fairly substantial being around 25cm long and stretched from just in front of and then under the seat. The first job was to remove the seat. This was really easy and took a couple of minutes. The parts were put safely to one side. The repair tape was removed and the split cleaned out and trimmed to expose fresh plastic.

Most people are pretty familiar with the technique of drilling each end of the split and then filling the crack. This simply seals the split and more than likely it will come back. Welding on the other hand joins the two sides of the split with additional material so it essentially becomes one.

I used a variable heat air gun and some 4mm HDPE welding rods. A total of 2 rods were used which represents around 60cm of additional material. The key is judging the level of heat required. Too much and the boat will be wrecked, not enough and the weld will not take.

The image above shows the results after the first pass. The marbling effect shows that the plastic is being mixed.

The image above shows the results after the third pass. After the third pass I checked the quality of the repair from the inside and then ran couple passes of welding rod on the inner part of the damage.

The image above shows the first pass on the inside of the Stomper. The excess new plastic was trimmed back and the boat was then put back together. I used a screwdriver to align the seat, seat nut and backrest bracket.