Broom made from plastic bottles. Broom made from plastic bottles

There have been many uses for plastic bottles. They are used as secondary raw materials in arranging flower beds and fencing areas. All kinds of fakes and so on are made from them. Another invention that this article is devoted to is a broom. Yes, it’s quite possible to make a broom out of a plastic bottle, we’ll tell you about two simple ways. So, let's look together at how to make a broom from plastic bottles with your own hands.

The first method is two-liter bottles

In the first case, you will need to collect quite a few eighteen two-liter plastic containers. To do this, you should prepare the following set building material and tool:

• A sharp stationery knife.
• Awl.
• Hammer.
• Nail.
• Scissors.
• The wire is soft.
• Broom handle.
• 18 two liter bottles.

So, if you already have everything at hand, then let’s look at how to make a broom from plastic bottles step by step. According to some estimates, not everything is about everything, it will take you about two hours. Let's get started:

• Seventeen bottles need to have their bottoms cut off.
• Next, use scissors to cut the prepared container lengthwise into 20 mm strips. but not cutting to the neck by approximately 60 mm.
• This procedure should be performed on all remaining sixteen bottles. Let only one remain temporarily unchanged.
• Then you take these chopped containers and cut off the necks of all of them, leaving only one.
• Now you hold a bottle in your hands that has a neck. On top of it you put sixteen bottles without a neck. During this process, care should be taken to ensure that the cut elements do not bend.
• At the next stage, you need to take a completely intact container.
• You should cut it off top part. To do this, measure 150 mm from the edge of the neck. The cut should be smooth.
• From above you put all the collected bottles together according to the principle of one into the other.
• In the next step, take an awl. For one piercing you need to pierce a hole. The hole must be made at a distance of 150 mm from the edge. Make a hole in two places.
• Through these holes you insert a wire that should be tied together. The protruding remains of the wire should be cut off with wire cutters.
• Next you need to prepare a wooden cutting. Its diameter should be equal to the internal diameter of the neck of the container.
• Having stripped the handle to the required diameter, thread it into the neck plastic container right up to the stop. The plastic container should sit tightly on the handle and not wobble.
• After this, a hole should be made in the neck in place of the existing thread. It will be necessary to screw one self-tapping screw into this hole so that the broom made from a plastic bottle is securely held on the wooden handle.

This is the simple way to make a broom from a plastic bottle. When working, it is important to follow several important requirements or even safety rules. If you've ever had to cut a plastic bottle with a knife, then you know that the knife can suddenly go in the wrong direction. For this reason, it is easy to cut your fingers or hands. Moreover, when cutting strips with scissors, it is important to ensure that they are the same size.

Advice! There are many different shapes of two-liter plastic containers. You should choose eighteen plastic bottles of the same shape. Otherwise, it will be difficult to put the broom together.

So, now let's look at the second manufacturing method.

The second method is to cut spirals

So, a broom from plastic bottles can be made with your own hands using a different technology. To do this, you should cut a plastic bottle into a spiral shape. Before starting the operation, you should completely cut off the neck and bottom.

Important! You can safely throw away the cut-off elements from the bottom, but save the necks for now; they will be needed to form a future broom from a bottle with your own hands.

So, you should get some kind of plastic cylinders. These are the ones you should cut into a spiral from. The width of the strip should be about 5 mm. It is important that this size is maintained along the entire length of the spiral. For cutting, it is better to use a sharp knife or scissors.

The resulting spirals must be heat treated. For this you can use different instruments and materials, for example, a gas burner, a blowtorch, a candle or the like. Thanks to this, the spiral will acquire the necessary hardness.

Important! Remember, you need to heat treat the plastic, not melt it.

So, straighten one spiral over the heat source. Gradually, the spiral should align. Alignment will be possible by bending the two longitudinal edges. So, all your spirals must be absolutely even. The resulting plastic pieces should be cut into pieces of twenty centimeters each. Next you should take the set aside necks.

The necks should be cut so that they can be glued together in pairs. As for the choice of glue, plastic cannot be glued with every adhesive. For example, on a large number of adhesives there is an inscription - prohibited for PET. Otherwise, the glue may eat away at the plastic instead of holding it together. The optimal glue is the usual moment.

When the necks glued together have dried, these blanks will also be needed. The middle of this sleeve should be tightly filled with aligned twenty-centimeter pieces of plastic. It is important to ensure that these blanks do not fall out during sweeping. To do this, take one lid and pour a small amount of instant glue into it. Next, carefully close the neck with the inserted plastic rods. Place the neck on a solid base, and press the rods tightly so that they are completely immersed in the glue in the lid. Then, turn the lid upside down so that the glue penetrates a little through the plastic strips. After a quarter of an hour, unscrew the lid. You need to wait until the adhesive on the plastic container has completely dried.

Now let's take the base for the broom. It can be a rectangular block. You need to screw it to it with self-tapping screws. plastic lids. First, make holes in the lids with an awl, since without this the lid may crack when tightening the screw. So, screw several plastic bottle caps in a row onto the base of the broom. They can be screwed not in a straight line, but mixed in a zigzag. The number of caps you have screwed on is exactly how many you should make the blanks described above.

When the glue on the first piece has dried, screw the neck to the lid. So, you should make several of these blanks. In each case the process will be repeated. After a few completed blanks, everything will be done automatically, so there are no particular difficulties in making this type of broom from a plastic bottle.

Again, it is worth reminding about safety precautions, because you will have to work with a sharp knife, and, possibly, with an open flame.

Conclusion

So, as we have seen, it is indeed quite possible to make a broom from a plastic bottle. To do this, you need to put in a little effort and ingenuity. Of course, you can find many more original solutions for how you can use a plastic bottle to make a broom from it. If you know about such methods, then write about it in the comments to this article. To consolidate all the theory provided, we invite you to watch prepared video materials. In them, home craftsmen clearly demonstrate the technology for making a broom from a plastic container. We hope that this material was useful to you and you will be able to cope with all the work yourself, and, if necessary, get additional information from the video.

DIY broom made from plastic bottles: save environment, giving a second life to plastic containers!

There are so many things around that surround people that are not in modern house. And all this litters not only your home, but also the environment. Few people realize that a second life, given to, say, a plastic two-liter water bottle, will help not only preserve nature, but also make the yard or, say, kitchen cleaner. Proof of this will be this small master class on making a real broom from plastic bottles.

In order for everything to be done quickly and the products to be of high quality, you need to prepare everything necessary for the work. But a broom will not work without these things and tools:

The bottle itself (from 10 pieces);
cuttings;
wires;
hammer;
nail;
scissors;
knife;
sewed

So, the process begins with preparing the required number of bottles. After all, a lot will depend on where the broom will be used - on the street, in the house for wiping, for example, dust from distant places, and so on. In short, first the bottom of a plastic bottle is cut off. It is better to make the cut with a sharp knife and continue with scissors.

The next step is cutting strips that will act as twigs. Clearly, it’s hard to believe that the broom will be hard. But combining them will give an excellent result. True, this will come later, but for now you should use scissors to make strips (half a centimeter wide) so that the cuts do not reach the neck about six centimeters.

The necks of all selected bottles must be cut off. This complex process, because the plastic is very hard in this place. Therefore, it is ideal to take two tools for work - a knife (very sharp) and scissors. That is, the first cut is made with a knife, then the necks are continued to be cut off with scissors. It is important to ensure that the knife does not slip, because it is not far from injury!

But one bottle out of all selected for this purpose remains with a neck. For what? More on this below.

When it comes to putting the rest of the bottles without necks on the bottle with a neck, you need to be more careful. That is, put bottle on bottle in such a way that they are tightly inserted into each other. Perhaps, when cutting the necks, it would be advisable to make the cuts a little wider each time so that the bottle fits over the previous ones.

As a result, the workpiece pressed to the table by hand will look something like this.

You need to separate the neck from another plastic bottle. But not at the very base, but retreating 15 centimeters.

This part should be carefully and tightly placed on top of all the bottles, placed like nesting dolls on top of each other.

Holes need to be made at two points on both sides of the bottles. An awl or something equally sharp is ideal for this role. Each layer must be pierced, but special care must be taken. After all, again the procedure becomes unsafe, since the awl can instantly slip off the slippery surface and injure your hand. Therefore, it is better to mark before this with something of a larger diameter, using a hammer.

Now in the place where the holes were made on both sides with an awl, it is important to accurately hit them with the wire.

If the holes are made clearly, and each layer was pierced with something larger in diameter than an awl, then the wire will pass through without difficulty. All that remains is to twist the ends and bite off the excess with wire cutters.

In principle, the base is ready. All that remains is to work on the cuttings. If there is no new one, no problem. There are a lot of broken tools, shovels, hoes or rakes on the farm. Therefore, having found a cutting suitable for these purposes, you should try it on to the diameter of the neck of the bottle, placed on top of all the others. If it suddenly doesn’t fit, don’t worry either - by cutting the cutting with a sharp knife, you can easily fit it and insert it.

But, if you do not nail the bottle to the handle, the broom will quickly become unusable. Therefore, armed with a hammer and a suitable nail, you need to nail the neck to the handle. Here, by the way, the process will also be very difficult. Why? Because the neck is very dense at the base, as we have already written, and the piece of wood itself (the stem) is also hard. That is, you need to pierce two dense materials. Therefore, you also first need to make a mark with an awl or something that helped pierce all the layers of the bottles, and hammer in a nail (also nail it on the back side, rounding off the sharp point with a hammer).

Well, this unusual but cute broom is ready to go! At any moment, as soon as it breaks down, you can replace it by inviting all your household to help. It’s faster and more valuable, because everyone worked together!

The final look of the craft.

Continuing the theme of crafts from plastic bottles, I would like to offer another job on making a plastic penguin with your own hands.

How to make a broom from plastic bottles with your own hands? Tell me, have you ever seen a broom made from plastic bottles? If you read the article to the end, you will not only see it, but you can also do it yourself.

Most summer residents who have garden paths made of or know that keeping them clean is not so easy. This is especially true after it rains, since the soil that has fallen off the shoes dries to the concrete. In this case, a broom with stiff bristles will help you. Such copies can be easily found on sale, but they cost a lot.

Another option is to cut down the willow thickets, take twigs from them and make an excellent rustic broom. But there is a much simpler option - make a broom from plastic bottles. Let's try it!

Making a broom with your own hands

First you need to understand what a broom is? This is the base to which flexible rods are attached. Nowadays it is almost impossible to find brooms with natural bristles, since synthetic ones are much cheaper. This is the simplest plastic in the form of a fishing line of different thicknesses, which is attached to the base. This means that to make such a broom with our own hands, we only need the same fishing line.

So, let's first select the base of the broom. An old brush is suitable for this, and you can use either a wooden or plastic base. If you don’t have an old brush, this is also not a problem: cut it out of a suitable board, the length of which is from 25 to 30 cm, the width is 5 cm and the thickness is about 2 cm.

If you have chosen an old brush as a base, this area must first be “shaved”, that is, get rid of the remnants of the old stubble. This operation can be easily performed using a utility knife. The fibers should be cut flush to the base. In this case, you will still have the base of the bristles inside the brush, but this is not a problem and will not interfere at all in the future. The main thing is that nothing sticks out.

Also, to make a broom from plastic bottles, you will need the main raw material for a broom - plastic bottles. Samples of almost any capacity are perfect for this - from 1.5 to 3 liters, but the main condition is that the bottle is not wrinkled and has a cylindrical shape in the central part, without depressions, grooves, etc. By the way, for this reason, five-liter eggplants are unsuitable, since they usually have concentric grooves along their entire height, i.e. stiffening ribs.

Please also keep in mind that the thickness of the bottles varies. Beer bottles are considered thicker, but containers for mineral water and lemonade are much thinner. The thickness largely depends on the volume - with a larger displacement the walls are thicker.

So, take a plastic bottle, remove the label, rinse the inside and let it dry. Next, you need to cut it using a stationery knife - cut off the neck with the plug and the central cylinder. You need to cut off the neck below the wide ring into which the cork rests. The bottom and the body itself are of no use to us. For waste-free production, the most that can be made from them is a bowl and funnel for your beloved cat.

Now from the cut part we need to get a fishing line for making bristles. To make a good broom from plastic bottles, we cut an even strip from the cylinder. This can be done with scissors, but the process will be longer and more tedious. To speed things up, you can make a convenient cutter.

Making a cutter for making strips from a bottle

To create a cutter, we need a block of wood with a cross-section of about 4*4 cm and a length of about 20 cm. You can also use a piece of a shovel handle that you no longer need. Using a hacksaw or a hacksaw, make a vertical cut in the middle of the block, the depth of which should be 5-6 cm. This cut is needed for cutting, and our cylindrical plastic workpiece will rotate in it. If you make the cut smaller, the bottle will simply slip out, and if you make it deeper, you will have to use more force when cutting.

• Now, you need to step back 0.5 cm from the bottom edge of the slot, and make a horizontal cut perpendicular to the first cut, the depth of which will be 1.8 cm. This will be the place for the knife. As a cutting knife, use a piece of blade, for example, from the same stationery knife with which you deftly dealt with the bottle. A piece should be cut off from the blade, slightly shorter in length than the width of the beam, inserted into the slot and secured with two screws. Ready!
• Next, we begin the process of making long ribbons from a plastic bottle. The edge of the cylinder should be cut with scissors, and thus make the beginning of the tape. A cut length of 10 cm and a width of 0.5 cm will be sufficient. Now the beginning of the strip should be inserted into the cutter, but UNDER the knife. Take the device in your left hand, and with your right you just have to pull the tip of the strip. The bottle will begin to rotate, and a smooth ribbon will appear from under the knife. It is important that you pull smoothly, without any jerking. Hooray! We have a long polyethylene ribbon.

Interesting! One bottle, the capacity of which was 2.5 liters, yielded 17 meters of fishing line, and from a 1.5 liter bottle only 11 meters.

And it would seem that a broom made from plastic bottles with your own hands is not so difficult to make, but there are some nuances. The ribbon-shaped blank is soft enough for a broom, and still retains its ring shape. To give the ribbon certain characteristics, heat it up. This is easy to do if you use a candle, gas burner or blowtorch.

• We will consider leveling using an example using a gas stove. Take the tape in your hands as far as your arm span allows, and move it smoothly and evenly over the fire source. When heated, it will straighten, the edges will curl inward, and now in cross-section it will not be flat, but semicircular. The main thing when heating is to choose the ideal drawing speed, because if you pull quickly, the tape will not have time to warm up and straighten, and if you hesitate, you will burn through it, and it will melt and tear.
• In the photo comparisons you can see that at first the tape was soft and twisted, and then it became straight and hard. Now we have a great ribbon made from a plastic bottle! All that remains is to assemble the broom.
• The broom itself consists of many individual panicles. Their number depends on the size of the base of your broom. For the above sizes, only 9 panicles were needed. The finished fishing line should be cut with scissors into equal lengths of 20 cm. Now you need to take 2 cut necks from PET bottles and glue them together. So, we need to glue the necks together, and for this we will use glue like “BF” or “Moment-classic”.

Please note , that using glue like “Super Moment” is not recommended if it is made on the basis of cyanoacrylate. You should pay attention to the label, where if it contains this element it will say “not recommended for PET bottles”.

After drying, the resulting sleeve should be filled with bristles, that is, already prepared pieces of fishing line. The number of twigs that fit into one bushing is unknown, but it needs to be packed tightly. Next we fasten it in the sleeve. To do this, you need to move it to the middle of the bundle, and coat the ends with the same glue that you used before to the full depth or a little more.

By the way, instead of glue, you can use ordinary sealant from a tube - when hardened, it will reliably fix all the twigs. Next, return the sleeve to the edge of the bundle and leave it alone until it dries completely.

While all the elements for the broom made from plastic bottles are drying, prepare the base: screw screws onto it with plugs, with 2 screws for each plug, and place them along the line of the broom. This will ensure that they will not be torn out when sweeping. Please also take into account that due to the rings that protrude on the bushings of the panicles, the plugs should not be fixed close to each other, but with a small distance of 0.4-0.5 cm.

They can be arranged in one line - the broom will then be thin, or it can be arranged in a zigzag, and then the working thickness will be 2 times thicker. When everything is dry, you can collect the panicle. To do this, screw them into the plugs that are located on the base. Now you just need to attach the handle and you can carry out your first test!

Important! We do not recommend using ordinary plastic tubes from household mops as handles, since the base turns out to be very brutal, and the load will be corresponding. For this reason, it is highly recommended to use only durable wooden cuttings.

After the first use, we can safely say that the broom perfectly cleans concrete and asphalt, and if necessary, it can perfectly clean even snow compacted by car wheels, which even a snow shovel cannot always cope with.

But this is not the end of making a broom from plastic bottles with your own hands. The necks of the bottle need to be cut off along the lower edge of the ring, but since the material in that place is too dense, use scissors or a knife. To make combing easier and faster, you can use a simple device that requires only a cork.

Make a hole in the center with a diameter of 0.5 cm. Insert a bolt of the same diameter into it, insert a cap inside the lid, secure the lid to the bolt with a nut and enhance the effect with a washer. Now all that remains is to insert such a template into the drill chuck, tighten the neck and you can easily cut off the excess.

Conclusion

Although it may seem to some that it is not worth bothering so much for the sake of some kind of broom, the efforts are not in vain. Firstly, this is a creative process and the creation of something new, and secondly, this is only one option for using plastic tape, and such things are much more practical than those that the mass market offers us.

There are probably few people on the planet who have never heard of plastic bottles. They store and sell a wide variety of products - from drinks to meat.

It is probably impossible to imagine your life without plastic, which is a product of the chemical industry.

Everyone knows how quickly empty containers for drinks, yoghurts and other food products accumulate. The use of plastic bottles for storing and distributing carbonated drinks, including beer, is especially popular, since such containers have excellent tightness, you can use such containers more than once, being confident that the liquid will not leak during transportation.

Another use for plastic bottles is the ability to make them various types crafts, the inventions of which not only young people, but also practical people are very fond of.

You may not believe it, but you can even make a raft out of them! Due to their volume and tightness, they correct location can easily keep the ship afloat, but it is better not to go on a trip around the world across the seas and oceans using this type of transport.

Even a week would not be enough to list all the types of crafts that can be made from plastic bottles, but we will talk about only one of them, which will certainly be very useful to people who have their own dacha or personal plot.

Now you will learn how to make a broom from plastic bottles.

From eighteen two-liter bottles

Materials and tools

• Eighteen two-liter bottles.
• Any suitable stick for the cutting.
• A piece of wire.
• Nail.
• Hammer.
• Awl.
• Knife.

How to do

To do this, you will only need to devote two hours of your time.

Take seventeen plastic bottles and cut off the bottom, then cut them lengthwise to make strips about half a centimeter wide. Leave approximately six centimeters to the neck.

Do the same with all the other bottles except the eighteenth.

Cut off the necks of sixteen of the already cut bottles and leave them on one.

Now on the container with the uncut neck you put the rest, whose necks have been cut off.

From the last, untouched bottle, cut off the top, stepping back about fifteen centimeters from the top, and put it on all the other bottles that have already been put on.

Using an awl, pierce all the bottles in two places and thread a piece of wire through them.

Twist the ends of the wire. Trim the tip of the stick, which is intended for the handle, until it can be inserted into the neck, then insert it into the bottle.

Take a hammer and a nail, then nail the bottleneck to the inserted handle.

That's it.

How to make a broom from cut up plastic spirals?

To begin, you must cut the bottles into spirals by first cutting off the bottom and top. We won't need the bottoms anymore, but we'll come back to the necks.
From the resulting cylinders, cut spiral shavings approximately half a centimeter wide using a sharp knife or scissors.

The resulting spirals are still not ready in terms of rigidity to make a broom. To give them a solid elastic shape, the spirals must be treated with heat.

To do this, you can use a candle, blowtorch, gas burner or gas stove in the kitchen.

Straighten the spiral in your hands and evenly pass it over the fire. Choose the right speed for running the tape; the final quality depends on this. When heated, the spiral becomes smooth and twisted lengthwise.

Cut the processed straight blanks into pieces twenty centimeters long.

Since such a broom consists of separately made small panicles, let’s start making them.

Cut the necks (for example, using a jigsaw) and glue them together in pairs. Use an adhesive that does not have the statement “Not recommended for PET” on its label. To avoid choosing for a long time, you can use the usual “Moment”.

After the glue has completely dried, tightly stuff the bushings with cut straight blanks.

To prevent the blanks from falling out, pour the same glue into the base and let it harden.

Have you ever seen what a broom made from plastic bottles looks like? After reading the article to the end, you can make such a broom with your own hands.

Many summer residents who have garden paths made of concrete or made of paving slabs know how difficult it is to keep them clean. Especially after rain, when the soil from the shoes dries to the concrete. Only a hard broom will help here. These are available for sale, but they are not cheap. Alternatively, you can go to the nearest willow thicket and cut some twigs that will make a nice rustic broom.
Is it possible to make such a broom from plastic bottles? Let's try it!

Making a broom from plastic bottles with your own hands

What exactly is a broom? The base to which flexible rods are attached. Nowadays it is almost impossible to find brooms or brushes made of natural bristles; mostly they are all synthetic. The same plastic in the form of a fishing line of varying thicknesses, attached to the base. This means that in order to make a broom yourself, you just need to get the same fishing line.

So, first we need the base of the broom. An old brush is perfect for this. The base can be plastic or wood.

If you don't have an old brush, it doesn't matter. It is enough to simply cut it out of a suitable board 25 - 30 centimeters long, 5 centimeters wide and one and a half to two centimeters thick.

First, you need to “shave” the old brush, that is, remove the remnants of the old bristles from it. This operation is easily performed with a regular stationery knife. The bristles are cut flush to the base. The fact that bundles of fibers remain inside the brush in the places where they are attached to the base does not bother us at all. The main thing is that the stubble does not stick out.

Now let's prepare the main raw materials for our future broom - plastic bottles.

Plastic bottles of almost any capacity are suitable for this - from half a liter to three. The main condition is that it should not be wrinkled and that it should have a cylindrical shape in its central part, without figured grooves, depressions, etc. By the way, because of this, five-liter eggplants are practically unsuitable, since most of them have concentric shapes along their entire height grooves - stiffeners.

It should also be taken into account that the thickness of polyethylene varies from bottle to bottle. Beer bottles are made thicker than lemonade containers and mineral water. The thickness also depends on the volume of the container - the larger the volume, the thicker the walls.

So, take an empty plastic bottle, remove the label, wash the inside and dry it. Then we cut it with a stationery knife, as shown in the photo with red lines - we cut off the central cylinder and the neck with the stopper. The neck should be cut below the wide ring into which the cork rests. Unfortunately, the neck cone and bottom are not useful to us. Perhaps you can use them to make a funnel and a bowl for a cat.

Now, in fact, we need to get the fishing line to make the bristles of our future broom. To do this, you need to cut an even strip from the cylinder. You can, of course, do this with ordinary scissors, but this is a very tedious process. To speed it up and make it easier, it is enough to build a simple cutter.

We make a cutter for producing plastic strips from bottles

For the cutter we need a wooden block with a cross-section of approximately 4x4 centimeters and a length of about 20 centimeters. You can also use a piece of an old shovel handle. In the upper part of the block, use a hacksaw or jigsaw to make a vertical cut in the middle, 5-6 centimeters deep. In this cut, the workpiece cylinder will rotate during cutting. If you make a cut smaller, the bottle will jump out of the groove, and if you make a deeper cut, you will have to make great efforts when cutting.

Next, stepping back from Nizhny the edges of the slot are 5 millimeters, strictly perpendicular to the vertical, we make a horizontal cut with a depth of 18 millimeters. This is the place for the knife. A piece of blade from the same office knife is used as a knife. We break off a piece from the blade slightly shorter than the width of the block, insert it into the slot and secure it with a pair of screws. That's it, our cutter is ready.

Having cut the edge of the cylinder with scissors, we make the beginning of the tape. It is enough to cut a strip 8 - 10 centimeters long and 5 millimeters wide. Then we insert the beginning of the strip into the cutter UNDER the knife, and insert the bottle into the vertical slot OVER with a knife.
Then we take the cutter in our left hand, and with our right hand we simply pull the tip of the strip. The bottle rotates in the slot, and a neat, even ribbon emerges from under the knife. The main thing is to pull the tape smoothly, without jerking.

So, we turned the cylinder blank into a long polyethylene tape. By the way, I measured it out of interest: one two and a half liter bottle yields 17 meters of fishing line. From one and a half liter - about 11 meters.

But the blank tape is too soft for a broom and, moreover, continues to retain the ring shape of the bottle. To give the tape the characteristics we require need to heat it up. This can be done over a candle, blowtorch or gas burner. I used a regular kitchen gas stove.

Taking a piece of tape in your hands, as far as your arm span allows, you need to move it smoothly and at a uniform speed over the fire source.
When heated, the tape straightens, its edges fold inward, and in cross-section it no longer becomes flat, but semicircular. When heating, the main thing is to choose the optimal drawing speed. If you pull quickly, the tape will not have time to heat up and will not straighten out. If you delay, you can overheat it and even burn it out - it will simply melt and tear.

In the photo above you can see how soft and twisted the tape was on the left before heating, and how hard and straight it became on the right after. So we got an excellent, durable fishing line from a plastic bottle! Now all that remains is to assemble the broom.

The entire broom consists of individual panicles. Their number depends on the size of the base of the future broom. I needed nine brushes for the base of a standard mop.

We cut the finished fishing line with scissors into identical strips 20 centimeters long. We take two cut necks from PET bottles and glue them together. I’ll tell you how to cut the necks at the end of the article., there will also be some bonus for those who read it carefully.

Glue the necks together. For this purpose, ordinary glue such as “Moment-classic” or “BF” is suitable.

Attention! I highly do not recommend rigid glue such as “Super-moment” based on cyanoacrylate. Pay attention to the adhesive label: there should not be the inscription “Not recommended for PET”.

After the glue has completely dried, we fill the resulting sleeve with bristles - cut fishing line.

I didn’t count how many twigs fit into one sleeve, I just stuffed it tightly until the twigs could be inserted.

Instead of glue, you can also use sealant from a tube - once it hardens, it will securely fix the rods in the sleeve. We return the sleeve to the edge of the bundle and leave it until the glue or sealant has completely dried.

While our brooms are drying, we prepare the base: we screw the plugs to it with self-tapping screws, two self-tapping screws for each, placing them along the line of use of the broom. This way they are guaranteed not to vomit when sweeping. It should be taken into account that, due to the protruding wide rings on the bushings of the panicles, the plugs should not be screwed close to each other, but with some gap - 4-5 millimeters.

The plugs can be placed in one line - the broom will be thin, or you can do it in a zigzag, in which case the working thickness of the bristles will be almost twice as large.

When the panicles are completely dry, we can finally assemble our new broom. To do this, we simply screw the panicles into the plugs on the base.

All that remains is to attach the handle to the broom - and you can test it! By the way, I don’t recommend using ordinary light, thin-walled tubular handles from home mops: our broom turned out to be brutal, the load on the handle is appropriate, so it’s better to use a durable wooden handle.

Practical tests of the broom showed its excellent working qualities! It perfectly cleans hard surfaces - concrete, asphalt. In one or two passes, a broom removes even snow compacted by car wheels, which even a snow shovel cannot do.

Using bottles of different colors, you can get different color combinations in panicles, and, most importantly, no neighbors will have such an exclusive! I'm not even talking about the environment - they made a new broom and didn't pollute the environment with empty bottles.

Now I return to the necks. They need to be cut from the bottle along the lower edge of the thick ring, which serves as a stop for the cork. But the polyethylene in this place is too thick to cut with a utility knife or scissors.

To speed up and facilitate the process, I used a simple device. I had to “sacrifice” one plug.

I drilled a hole in it with a diameter of 5 millimeters strictly in the center. I inserted a bolt of the same diameter into it, with the head inside the cover, secured the cover to the bolt with a nut, and did not forget to reinforce it with washers. Now it is enough to insert such a template into the drill chuck, screw the neck into it and you can easily cut off the excess polyethylene.

There are two cutting methods, diametrically opposed. In the first case, I turn on the drill and bring a hacksaw blade to the cut site. In the second case, on the contrary, I leave the cartridge motionless and cut off the excess with a jigsaw. Both methods are convenient and simple, everyone can choose their favorite one.

If the cut is not very even, it doesn’t matter; it can be easily sanded with a file or coarse sandpaper. This is also recommended for better gluing of the bushings to each other.

And now the promised bonus and interesting ideas

If, after making a broom, there are unused bottle caps left, do not rush to throw them away.

Two necks with stoppers glued together are an excellent container for all sorts of little things. The main thing is that it is sealed.

This means that you can store, for example, matches, tablets, salt, pepper in it - and they will remain dry. This container fits three AA batteries perfectly. This means that you will always have a NC for your country lantern or receiver. In order not to confuse which container contains what, you don’t even have to label them, just make them from necks and caps of different colors. Then you will definitely not forget that the white contains salt, and the orange contains matches...

And the last idea for today: many summer residents leave the key to their summer house under the floorboard, porch or on the door frame. But bad people also know about this and can take advantage of it in your absence. What if you put the key to the dacha in such a container and simply press it into the ground under the window? Yes, not a single thief will pay attention to the lemonade cork sticking out in the ground, and certainly not guess that it is not just an old cork, but a container with a key!

Conclusion

Someone will say: “It was worth working so hard for a cheap broom...”. I won’t object, but, firstly, the process of creativity and creating new ideas is important to me, and, secondly, having found such a non-trivial use for plastic bottles, having obtained a beautiful and durable tape from them, I have already begun to think where else it can be used in the countryside except as broom bristles.

Or something else, for example, a bird net. If you combine hard ribbons as carriers, and hang rustling soft spiral strips between them, you will get the cherries and serviceberries, not the blackbirds/sparrows. Wrap the gaps in the fence with the neighbor's property with such tape, and close the cracks under the fence from stray animals. Yes, even as reinforcement, put in concrete mortar, for example, when building paths or secondary buildings...

Some use half the bottles as pots for seedlings, microgreenhouses for them. There are also special craftsmen who cut bottles into rectangular fragments and build entire greenhouses from them. Or, having collected a certain number of bottles of the same shape and color, they make fences, and even full-fledged fences.

There are still many ideas, I will definitely tell you how I used old bottles in a new way at my favorite green dacha.

Manufactured in January 2014 in the city of Samara.

P.S. I already have excursions at work to see it and have several orders, but I refuse - it’s not interesting to repeat what has been done.

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