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Recently, a very good friend of mine had a home construction project to complete. Don was finishing his laundry and freezer room with a substantial amount of tongue & groove pine wainscotting.
As we have done for almost thirty years, we have taken turns visiting to work on each other’s projects. This time it was my turn to visit his place and help him with one of his jobs. These “jobs” were often nothing more than thinly disguised excuses for our two families to get together again; always a real pleasure.
The work was going to go a lot faster than I had originally thought when I realized that we’d be using a pneumatic brad nailer, rather than a manual push type or even a hammer, for that matter.
Then Don rolled out his compressor. It was home-made. Most excellent!
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And yes, before you begin a project like this at home, make sure you are safe in all you do. When Don builds one of his contraptions (yes, he’s done this kind of thing before) I know that he is very, very careful to make sure that his handiwork will never be a danger if used properly.
Here’s how he put his home-made compressor together.
The picture above shows the finished unit, complete with cart, wooden box around the receiver, on which he mounted the compressor head and the electric motor.
In his travels, Don found the cart in someone’s trash, took it home, and fixed it. That’s where he uses his home-made welder. Just kidding!
One of his careers was in the HVAC (heating, ventilation & air conditioning) industry, and during his time there was able to salvage a used, single-piston reciprocating compressor head, which is mounted in the center of the box.
On the right is the electric motor (also salvaged). The electric motor shaft & pulley, the belt and the compressor shaft and pulley are inside the wooden belt guard, purpose-built to keep hands away from those dangerous pinch-points.
To the left of the compressor head Don installed a coalescent filter. Since the compressor head is quite old, a lot of oil blows by the piston rings, and the coalescent filter removes most of it from the air stream.
Air then flows down into the receiver through a leather flapper valve (check valve) that’s somewhat antiquated, but it works.
The pressure switch is top right of the motor, but there’s no unloader valve. Don explains, “there’s enough leak in the line between the compressor and the flapper valve so that long before the pressure in the tank drops to the cut-in pressure, there’s no longer any pressure over the cylinder piston”.
A good long extension cord is wound around the wire rack so this compressor can work quite some distance from a 120 VAC wall plug.
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This picture above shows the FRL leading to the checked coupler shown on the left. When a connector from an air hose is plugged into the coupler, air will flow.
Don’s also got a “full pressure” line teed off the line going from the receiver to the FRL. You can just see the regulator to the right of the picture in behind the air filter. He set this up so that, if he wishes, he can get non-filtered air coming out another line.
I’ve used a lot of smaller type 120 VAC air compressors, some of which were extremely quiet ($1,000 +++ in cost), and some that were really inexpensive but loud as heck.
Don’s home-made compressor makes noise, of course, but it’s a fraction of what might be expected, and it’s quite easy to talk while the compressor is running.
Under the receiver is a manual “stop-cock” which Don assures me he uses regularly to drain the compressor-generated water from the tank.
A neat unit, well constructed, very useful for smaller jobs (like brad nailing and blowing the dust out of his computer) and I thank him very much for providing the pictures for this page.
Now, did I tell you about his home-made computers!!! That’s another story.
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