It seems to be all too common that the handles of large trugs snap or break off the body of the trug. I have quite a few sitting around here.
Having found a bit of scrap 12mm ply and an offcut of old rope I thought I’d have a go at fixing one. I cut two pieces of ply per handle and screwed them to the inside and outside of the trug so the plastic should hopefully not be taking too much load, then drilled a couple of holes to take a knotted piece of rope for the handle itself. I used a countersink bit on these holes too, just to soften the edges a bit.
There may be neater ways to do this. Just cutting rings of ply for the reinforcement of the handles, for instance. Or perhaps to splice the rope back into itself to make a loop, avoiding the need for knots at all. I can’t see that doing away with some sort of reinforcement will work though — these are forty litre trugs and when full may be quite heavy.
