how to reinforce sun damaged plastic?

[dlb]

someone just gave me a few vintage xmas candle lawn ornaments, like this:



but the plastic is quite sun damaged. it's cracked and fairly brittle. is there anything i can paint on them to strengthen them, some kind of hardening varnish or something?

i've really missed the off-topic section of this forum, haha.

[rer233]

Now that's waaay O/T!

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Tom M.

[Petros]

try using a heat gun on them. work a small area at a time, when you heat the plastic to just below melting point it gets the molecules to rebond together, the sun breaks the cross linking that causes the damage. It has to be done carefully, I used a rotating pattern carefully watching for the change in color, and than working the heat in small circles, moving the heat as you see the color change back to normal. If you leave the heat too long in one place you will see the surface start to blister, so it takes a careful balance between enough heat to get it to restructure, and not so hot it loses shape and melts out.

My dad's Volvo X-Country has large charcoal plastic bumpers, fender splash guards, and side guards that turn uneven pale gray in the California sun. I spent some time trying to make it look better, trying the various chemical treatments, (none worked very well). I thought it was just permanently sun damaged. I ran across a Youtube video using a heat gun. I gave it a try and was amazed, it made all of the sun faded plastic look like new again. I even used it to "weld" some tears back together.

I do not know if it will work with the type of plastic your yard art is made of, but it works very well with the ABS plastic on most auto applications.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQs2ik1dzzE