Sugru - Hack it!

A while back I was searching for something interesting for Joshua to learn and play with; a modelling material perhaps but not something as prosaic as clay. What I wanted was something a bit more, well, technical than that. Sounds a bit geeky doesn't it! Anyway firstly I came across a commercial polymer called Polymorph and this looked to be just the ticket; a plastic material that becomes workable with less than boiling water and yet hardens to a 'true' plastic. When the bag arrived Joshua and I were very excited and we put the kettle on immediately! However it turns out that the polymer isn't all that malleable and so after a bit of experimentation I decided that my search should continue.

Shortly afterwards I came across a new product called Sugru and I don't mind admitting that I was pretty geeked-out by this stuff! It looked like you could form pretty much anything out of this wonder material and that once cured it's flexible, waterproof and resistant to both heat and cold. Even better the inventors celebrate the endless variety of hacks that Sugru facilitates on their blog and this is worth the price of admission to the club by itself. So I ordered myself a bag of multi-colour minipacks and waited eagerly for the postman (why do they come in little foil packs? Because the silicone cures in 24 hours and a big pack wouldn't last once opened).

When the Sugru arrived I was a little bit awed though and just a teeny bit cautious; what if I messed up and made a mess of my hack? I'm no sculptor you know! Still I knew where I wanted to start and that was with my bike; there are some headset bolts that stick out and I'm forever scraping my leg on them when I'm out of the saddle and powering up Swains Lane. So these were the first 'problems' in my life to receive the Sugru treatment:

No more scratches and scrapes here

What a revelation! Since this little hack I've barely given these sharp little bolts a second thought and Lenore doesn't keep asking me about these strange little scratches! Then, a week or two later, I noticed that my Garmin watch strap had developed a little nick and might prove troublesome. How true. By the end of my run one half of the strap had split completely and I didn't hold out much hope for the other half. However Sugru rode to my rescue once again with a total repair of the strap:

Don't hide your light away!

What a success. The watch feels just as comfortable to wear as it ever did and I didn't have to send it anywhere near a Garmin repair centre. A great result and just another example of Sugru coming up trumps. Now I just have to see how well it copes with repairing a broken sun visor - since Joshua 'accidentally' snapped the one in my car! Oops.