fixed a pet peeve with plastic ammo boxes today

[anothernewb]

personal pet peeve. Love those 50 and 100 round ammo boxes but hate that the lid always wants to stay closed. mostly just to the plastic webbing on the back. Better boxes have hinges, but I've got a ton of these cheap ones.

Happened to have the heat gun handy for another project, and got to thinking maybe I can change the memory of the plastic to an open position. as you can see, initial results are promising.
We will see how things work after they've been closed for awhile.

Before:



After:

 

[rocirish]

That looks promising, keep us posted. I have the same problem

 

[jmorris]

Use them so much the plastic breaks then use duct tape for the hinges, works great.

One other one, when your plastic hinges on your cooler break, take seatbelt material and cut a section to fit under the old broken hinges, they will last for years after that.

 

[Ironicaintit]

nice tip, I think I'm going to use it!

 

[Mauser lover]

Dude.... your bench is WAY too clean...

But thanks for the tip. I got some "Smart Reloader" RCBS knock-off stuff a while back, and they have hinges!
https://www.amazon.com/SmartReloade...&qid=1519246167&sr=1-1&keywords=smartreloader

But when they go out of business (already can't get their small press, I think) and I need to resort to this type of hinge...

 

[Louca]

anothernewb, I like your idea. The kind of hinge arrangement on those boxes is called a "living hinge." I found a write-up on it, link is here.

One thing the write-up mentions is the orientation of the plastic fibers and how that relates to strength of the hinge. It states, "As molded the fibers of the plastic are somewhat random in orientation. In order to orient the fibers to aid in prolonging the hinge life, ... it needs to be flexed a minimum of 2 times while it is still hot, for optimum strength."

So you may want to add a final step your procedure to flex the warm hinge a few times before you leave it to cool in the fully open position.

Great idea, thanks for sharing it!