Our stopper got pushed through the bladder while deflated and in transit and now we have a 1/8" hole in the bladder.
Anyone found a successful way to patch the bladder ?
Our most successful patch was with duct tape.
We haven’t had any luck getting a popped ball back together. If you just need any ball for a demo, you can get several different 24-25" medicine balls to work. They won’t fly the same but they’re good enough for demos. Otherwise, you just have to get a new one. Keep the old, broken bladder for next build season as the material it is made out of is a great gripper material for rollers, pinchers, etc.
Electrical tape is more elastic and should therefore work better than duct tape.
We had a previously ripped bladder still laying around the shop, so when we got a small puncture in our second ball, I was able to patch it by cutting a patch out of the other bladder and gluing it in using PVC pipe cement. Hasn’t leaked a bit in 4 months.
Wrap the entire ball in duct tape. Even better, Make a ball out of duct tape.
In all seriousness though, you could try using something like ear plugs.
You could try a bicycle tire repair patch
For all of the balls we have popped, we’ve used a Pool liner repair kit. It has worked well everytime.
There is an 8 dollar ball from Walmart that is the exact same weight and size as the original ball.
We found this ball flies farther with a linear punch shooter than the original ball, assuming we’re talking about the same ball. I think it would be fine for a catapult though or any shooter that doesn’t really rely on ball compression.