Bought a $40 heat gun for shrinking paracord knots and it melted half my rope toys

I used to just use a lighter for finishing the ends on my braided fleece tug toys... figured it was good enough. Then I saw some folks online talking about heat guns being way more precise, so I grabbed a cheap one from the hardware store. First try, I held it too close and the paracord just bubbled up and fused together into a nasty mess. Three hours of braiding down the drain... I was pretty ticked. Now I stick to the lighter and just practice my technique, because that $40 felt like a total waste. Has anyone else had a tool fail them like this or am I just bad at using it?

2 comments

2 Comments

mason79811d ago

I mean, "three hours of braiding down the drain" is a bummer, but it's paracord, you know? It's like five bucks for a spool. I get being annoyed, but calling a $40 heat gun a "total waste" seems dramatic when you literally just held it too close (which is on you, not the tool). A lighter can screw up knots too if you don't watch the flame. Maybe spend ten minutes on YouTube figuring out the right distance instead of blaming the thing for doing what heat guns do.

luna51911d ago

My buddy Dave once bought a $60 soldering iron specifically for fixing rc car batteries and he melted the tip right off on the first attempt because he forgot to tin it properly. He spent an hour looking at this sad little blob of copper on his workbench. Then he just went back to using his old $15 iron that barely works but at least he knows how to not break it halfway through a project. Sometimes the fancy tools just need a learning curve that nobody warns you about until after you've already wrecked something.