Note: the buckle itself is not part of a parachute, and is not a safety-critical application.
I need to repair or replace a plastic parachute buckle on a 2" wide strap on my frame backpack’s hip belt.
The “female” part of the buckle was stepped on (reader, I stepped on it) and the top and bottom sides broke. I could try to reglue the buckle with superglue, but the cyanoacrylate glues don’t work on polyethlene or polypropylene plastics, and I’m not sure what type of plastic the buckle is made from. Anyone know of a way to tell?
I could also replace the buckle in toto but, as the end of the strap attached to the female part of the buckle is doubled over twice and glued, I’m not sure I will be able to get it back into its original configuration once I get the buckle off the strap.
Trying to repairing buckles, other than for field expediency, is a waste of time and likely as not to end up having to deal with the busted buckle right when you are fjording a stream or climbing over a fallen log.
Any tailor or seamstress can replace the buckle and restitch the strap for a nominal cost. It’s well worth avoiding having to deal with a cheap ‘fix’ that breaks on you at the most inopportune time.
ETA: Yeah, As just posted above, attempting to “repair” plastic with any sort of adhesive is a fool’s errand. The entire discussion here ought to be about how to replace the damaged buckle and its mate with new ones.
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Pictures would be nice. What does “parachute buckle” mean in your parlance? Google image search comes up with about 25 different incompatible varieties.
When I’ve had to repair or improve webbing & buckles like that I often buy a kit of parts from amazon, and end up cutting off the existing heat-fused (probably not glued) ends of the strap, then setting a splice buckle further back and a new male/female buckle at the point of use. You usually end up having to replace both male & female parts to ensure you have matching components. They’re all similar, but similar is not nearly as secure as “exactly the same”.
If you have a heavy duty sewing machine you can often do the fold-over and sew metod to permanently attach the terminal buckle(s). If not, there are types that just attach by having the tail go through the buckle body a couple times then lead back out towards the fixed end of the strap. That consumes a couple more inches of strap, so that’s where/why you end up splicing a longer section of webbing in there using a splicing buckle.
Personally, I might try repairing it just as an experiment, to see how well it works. Wait until you have something else that needs supergluing, and it doesn’t cost you anything but time. But the expected result of that experiment would be that it doesn’t, and I’d keep the replace option as a very close plan B.
I agree with that. Some of the bookbags I have with buckles like that have sewn straps but the nylon webbing is probably too tough for most household sewing machines. But a professional ought to be able to do it.
Rather than a tailor / seamstress / alterations place, I’d take the bag to a cobbler / shoe repair place. They definitely have the tools, materials, and expertise to sew webbing easily. They might even stock the parts you need.
If it is in hard leather or something as thick as sailcloth, for sure. But most tailors will have an industrial grade sewing machine capable of sewing through just about any thickness of Nylon strap or Cordura for working on heavy coats or thick details. And you can find tailors in almost any small city; I’m trying to remember the last time I saw a retail cobbler; except for some workboots and men’s custom dress shoes, there are few modern shoes that can be repaired for less than it would take to replace them.
I’m going with the replace option thanks to your sage advice and a little call to a local tailor. Home Depot apparently carries the buckles, and the work can be done while-you-wait.
I get the chills when I hear about home-repaired or (specifically) home-altered parachutes. The owner-operator of a parachuting school I attended lost his own son to such an alteration, but it wasn’t the guy’s fault, it was something the son did on his own ill-advised initiative.
The son was an experienced skydiver and participated in competitions. AIUI, for whatever reason, he thought it would be advantageous to move the reserve chute from its normal location at the back to the front. On the ill-fated jump in question, the main got tangled, which is not completely unusual for high-performance wing-type chutes. He cut away as per normal procedure, and then found (again, as I understand the story as it was told to me) the ripcord for the reserve jammed because of the way it had been bunched up at the front. Some of the details may not be quite right but the moral of the story is (a) he modified the chute’s normal configuration, (b) he cut away the main when it malfunctioned, and (c) the reserve failed to deploy when it was the only chute he had.
ETA: As for me, I never got past a few static-line jumps with old military-type round chutes. Somewhere around the fourth jump, a little voice inside my head asked, “Why are you doing this? Are you insane?”.
There are enough things that can go wrong with an improperly-rigged parachute of proven design; making ad hoc modifications to a parachute configuration—especially the reserve—without extensive testing and validation is just asking to become a meat pancake.
Indeed. At this skydiving club, and I presume at all other reputable ones, parachutes could only be repacked by those possessing the certification to do so. I don’t know how rigorous the certification is, but it does exist and it was taken seriously.
One of my best friends and airline pilot co-workers was a part-time skydiving instructor and overall skydiving fiend.
He was fine up to about year 10 in his hobby/side gig when the Twin Otter jump plane crashed shortly after takeoff leaving ~10 dead and him and one other skydiver barely alive.
He was left quadriplegic and killed himself about 2 years later. The other “survivor” lived 10 days in a coma before being unplugged by kin.
It’s an inherently dangerous sport run on an economic shoestring an inch from disaster all day every day.
Anyone I’ve ever met who flew jump planes early in their career can tell horror stories of the risks heedlessly run in pursuit of barely break-even economics.
I refer to those as Fastex buckles, and I’ve replaced many of them. It’s pretty easy to do yourself, a good sturdy needle and dental floss work fine for sewing webbing. I carry a few extra buckles in my emergency kit along with the sewing materials.
I’ve spent some time at jump centers and I was not impressed with their attitude or commitment to safety. They like to talk about how few deaths occur, but it turns out there are many, many injuries. I have a friend who is serious skydiver and I always hope their luck continues to be good.
While you can “weld” certain types of plastics with solvents like, e.g., dichloromethane, and I might even try it because why not, the advice to get a new one, just in case, is sound, as well as to pay a tailor in case you do not have access to or know how to use an industrial sewing machine. They will stitch it up with some nice polyamide thread.
ps I once repaired a bicycle reflector using CH2Cl2, and the result was it was it was OK for another couple of years before it broke again, so not a permanent fix but I’m willing to stipulate my technique was bad. Not positive what it was made of.
For a small job like that, hand-sewing is nearly as easy as machine sewing, anyway. And as long as you have a thimble, there’s no difficulty in hand-sewing thick webbing.
