Mother's 55-Gallon Barrel Pump: One-Evening Project

Enlarge Image Image Gallery

Man! Do we ever love all those old shop magazines that MOTHER has in her reference library! They surely do come in handy.

For instance: When MOTHER researcher Dennis Burkholder recently got tired of wrestling with a 55-gallon drum of solvent every time he wanted to pour out a quart of the fluid, he cleverly retired to MOTHER's reference library. And, once there, a diligent search soon brought him face to face with some old Popular Science plans for the construction of a do-it-yourself bilge pump.

And so, Dennis "did it himself" . . . starting with a 38-1/2" length of 1-1/2" conduit pipe and a piece of 1 " conduit four inches long. First he cut a 1"-diameter hole in the side of the 1-1/2" conduit two inches from one end, and then he welded the 4"-length of 1 " pipe onto the opening so that it was perpendicular to the long piece of tubing. While he was at It, he cut a 1-1/2" hole Into the center of an ordinary 55-gallon drum bung (or screw plug) . . . slipped the plug up over the long section of conduit until it was four inches below the "spout" he'd just welded on . . . and welded the bung in place too.

Burkholder then directed his attention to the other end of the long piece of pipe . . . where he installed a bottom stop valve. This was simply a 1-3/8"-diameter wooden plug cut from a piece of 1"-thick scrap lumber. After drilling a 1/2" hole through the center of the plug, Dennis used a brad or two to fasten a 1-1/4" circle of leather (cut from scrap lying around the shop) to the plug's "top". This created a flap stop valve which—when installed in the bottom end of the conduit as shown—would allow liquid to flow only one way: up.

That homemade valve, by the way, was secured in the end of the tubing by [1] pushing it into position, [2] drilling four holes, each 1/64" smaller than the brads that would go into them, through the wall of the conduit and into the wooden plug, and [3] driving in the four brass brads. This served two purposes: First, the predrilled holes kept the brads from splitting the hardwood plug. And, second, it still left enough gripping power in the four holes to keep the brads from ever loosening and falling out.

The leather pump valve (mounted on the bottom of a 40"-long 318" pump rod) was made by scribing a circle with a radius—not diameter—of 1-3/8" on an old piece of boot leather. The circle was then cut in half and the edges of one of the halves were drawn toward each other until they overlapped about 1/8" all the way up (thus forming the half-circle into a cone). The overlap was glued together with Parma-bond cement and then sewed with a waxed thread so the cone would never come apart.