[jonw]

I couldn’t find a small sturdy iron in Sydney Australia and I didn’t want to buy one online without seeing it first as they all looked way too big, so I built this one out of a $15 hair straightener. It was a 40-watt hair straightener and I used the heating elements from both sides of the straightener in the iron. The dial adjusts to 230°C and it seals well when set to 215°C. I’ve tested a few seams and it seems to be quite capable of doing the job easily. Now, at long last, I can start building my raft! I’ll briefly describe how I built it but if anyone is interested I can add more detail.

The flat heating elements inside the straightener are two flat ceramic bars 10mm x 2mm x 40mm arranged in a long strip between two conductive strips, and wrapped in an insulating tape. I took these apart and re-arranged the elements side by side (still in parallel) to be more the shape I wanted (20mm x 40mm) and re-wrapped them with a high temp tape called Kapton (often used in 3d printing). The images below shows only one of the two elements. The blue wired strip on top is part of thermal control.

Re-wrapped element and thermal control strip:

I set the elements up in a foot I built out of brass pieces from a brass door hinge silver soldered together. There are 6 pieces to form the foot, and filed and sanded to shape and smooth the outside. If you look closely at the pics you can see some of the joints to get an idea how it went together. The stainless stem and foot top was a nightmare trying to braze them together but I got there in the end. The wooden handle was shaped out of hardwood, hollowed out and the dial inserted.

The foot assembled. Note the top doesn’t overlap the sides Matt.

The finished foot is about 23mm wide so will be ok for sealing tapes. The heat does travel up the stem a bit so a couple more holes would have been good, but not so hot that it will burn fingers or handle. Ironically while posting this the hobby shop called, they have just got their heat sealing irons in!…

[Author]

Replies