Sugru hack saved my camcorder

My first camcorder was just a little bit disappointing; the zoom lense was such that it could easily film far-away stuff (e.g. I could just about make out the whitening of the pole during a Martian winter), but the field of view was way too narrow for close-up stuff (e.g. my fast-moving toddler).

I bought a wide-angle adapter, screwed it onto the filter threads on the front of the camcorder. Years of happy wide-angle filming followed... until my poor video camera drowned while surfing. I quickly bought a very similar model online... and was devastated to find that it couldn't take my old wide-angle adapter - in fact, it had no filter threads at all!

Years of miserable narrow-angle filming followed. Then, along came Sugru! The plasticine-like molding qualities and reasonable setting-time allowed me to mount my old adapter on my new camera (which had an awkwardly sloping non-perpendicular front end) and to get the optical alignment just right (I left the camera on while hacking so I could check for problems with focus or vignetting).

Wide-angle adapter mounted with (blue) sugru

I'm thrilled with the result - the camera is maybe slightly less pretty, but I can squeeze a lot more world into each frame. My wide-angle adapter is now a permanent feature of my camera - and I like it that way.

Sugru: almost too much fun

I'm very enthusiastic about fixing broken things (some might say this could have something to do with how often I manage to break things). A steady stream of small repairs pass across my workbench - a little bit of carpentry, gluing, riveting, fibreglassing, etc.

Sugru in action

Plastic, though, has always been a problem - until now. I've recently got a little packet full of sachets of a new "wonder material" from Sugru.com . The 50g sachets contain a material which looks and handles a lot like plasticene - very easy to shape and mold. Unlike plasticene, it starts to set about 30 minutes after coming out of the sachet. The really neat thing about it is that it sticks very well to whatever I've put it on. So far, I've repaired a screwdriver handle(plastic), a plastic basin with a long thin crack, a couple of long gashes on my brothers wetsuit (neoprene), and put a little blob on my gate (steel) to keep its bolt a little quieter.

Any negatives? Well, it does come in sachets, so once you open one, it's a use-it-or-loose-it situation. So far though, this hasn't been much of a drawback - it is so easy and fun to use, you'll just be looking for things you can stick it to.