Glueless PVC Joints That Stay Stuck Together But Can Be Taken Apart in Seconds!

I love PVC pipe and tubing.  You can build awesome projects with it like Trebuchets, Steady cam systems, Light stands, Green houses, and tons more. Its a grownups (and kids) big erector set. But some things are too big to glue together so you want to disassemble them. Problem is sometimes your project just wont stay together without some glue. Using PVC glue is messy and smelly.

Now some have asked why I did not just buy some metal spring pins or clevis pins. There are a few reasons. Metal on plastic tends to wear down the plastic and make sloppy joints. The metal spring pins are too tough to push into a tight fitting hole and hard to drill to add a key ring. Plus you can make hundreds of these for pennies where as hardware can end up costing you a lot more money.


Here is my quick, easy, cheap and light solution to this problem:

(the next steps show you what I show you in the video below)

You will need:

• Key rings, you can get 50 for a couple bucks at a stationary store
• 1/4" poly tubing. You can get 25' of this at a hardware store for less than 5 bucks

Tools:

• Drill
• 1/16" drill bit
• 3/32" drill bit
• Utility or hobby knife
• Pencil sharpener

• First cut about a 1" section of tubing off
• next drill a 1/16" hole in one end of the tubing to put a keyring on
• taper the other end of the tubing
• cut a slot along the length of the tube starting from 1/8" from the edge of the keychain hole to the end of the taper
• pinch the tubing so that it curls under itself

Voila little plastic spring pin! 

Now take the PVC structure you have made (I just have some scraps here to demonstrate) 
Fit the parts together so they fit snugly
Drill a 3/32" hole thru the fitting and into the PVC pipe like shown in the pictures
Insert your new handy dandy whizzy pin!

Your done a glue-less joint that wont fall apart. This can be handy when prototyping, you have something big you want to break into smaller pieces, or something you just need to take apart.

Have fun!

Let us know how you use these, we want to know. 

Again here is the video for you to see first hand how its built. they take about 20-30 seconds each but this video is 6 min to show you how... thanks for checking out my ible, dont forget to comment and like it. We have fragile egos and need a boost now and again :)