During tough economic times, repairing and restoring broken materials and household items has become more relevant. Learning how to tackle projects yourself rather than buying or hiring has become more essential than ever. Pratley has a diverse range of high-performance adhesives that can save you from having to fork out for an expensive replacement.

Applications range from repairing damaged China plates to ornaments and porcelain basins to restoring handles on knives and other kitchen utensils, reinforcing damaged cast metal objects and even making emergency repairs to vehicles. “The DIY market is growing well due to people realising the need to save costs,” explains Mark Bell, National Sales and Marketing Manager for Adhesives at Pratley.

One such adhesive is Pratley Quickset® White. It is a quick-setting, high-strength adhesive that adheres to most rigid materials like ceramic, stone, concrete, glass, fibreglass and metals. It is ideal for well-mating surfaces. Due to its glossy white finish, it is the perfect adhesive to repair bathroom and kitchen ceramics, porcelain and many other colour-sensitive substrates.

Pratley Quickset® White is also ideal for heavy-duty applications where surfaces are somewhat rough as it does not run easily and is perfect for gap filling. It can be filed, sanded and even painted. The adhesive is thixotropic, meaning it can also be applied on vertical repairs.

Certain applications may require an adhesive that sets clear. Pratley Quickset® Clear is an ultra-high-performance epoxy ideal for repairing broken ornaments, glass items, wooden furniture, costume jewellery, and broken picture frames. This is a very versatile epoxy-based adhesive that is high-strength, fast-curing, and bonds to most rigid materials like ceramics, stone, concrete, fibreglass and metals. It can also be drilled, sawed and sanded.

Apart from repairs to clear or white materials, what about matching the colour of metal or steel? Pratley Steel Quickset® can match the colour of most ferrous metals. It can therefore be used on any repairs where the colour matching of metal is aesthetically important. Suggested uses include filling blow holes in metal castings, repairing cracked metal castings, making fillets or filling seams in metal parts, bonding ceramics or slate, tiles where the colour must match, bonding metal carburettor parts and even repairing holes in car sumps or fixing motorcycle casings.

Once cured, this quick-setting adhesive metal filler and mender is rigid enough to facilitate filing, sawing, machining and sanding within two hours. It adheres to metal, stone, concrete, slate, glass and most rigid materials.

When it comes to quick repairs on your car or motorcycle in the garage, Pratley Powda Bond® is an instant repair system and gap filler that can be used either as a two-part kit or as a single adhesive. This ultra-fast curing adhesive can be painted, sanded and filed. It can repair most plastics and is ideal for car bumpers, damaged wheel caps, motorcycle fairings, damaged carburettors, radiator overflow valves and even pool pump valves.

Looking for a repair solution for rigid plastics, metals, aluminium, ceramics, fibreglass, Perspex, nylon, brass and even very hard woods? Look no further than Pratley 1-2-3 Quickset®, which can be used to refix a tumble dryer handle, mend ceramics or even mend broken rigid plastic toys. For the garage, it comes in handy to bond a loose rear view mirror to the windscreen, for example. This fast curing, high strength and shock-resistant acrylic adhesive requires no mixing and is applied in three easy steps.

“With the need to save on household and DIY expenditure increasing of late, reliable high-performance adhesives are certainly a very good option for long-term repairs and can eliminate the cost of replacing items and components. All Pratley products carry our policy statement stating that their performance must exceed all others on the world market,” says Bell.