Photo-Documented DIY cylinder guide!
This guide is fairly long because it deals with step by step run through of making your own pump cylinder at home with fairly easily obtainable materials etc. A seasoned inventive DIYer would be wasting their time here, but I hope this can be of use or at least interest to some guys!
Purpose/Need/Requirement/Motivation/etc:
I simply wanted a decent pumping cylinder to take up the art of pumping for PE. Commercial products were considered, but preventatively expensive in most cases, and in one sex shop that we looked into, the cylinders they had in stock were too short also.
What I needed was a custom build to accommodate my existing length, give me room for expansion girth wise (which was my aim) but with plenty of room in case I happened to gain length (which I am historically inclined to put on much more easily than girth) and at an affordable price.
Before I begin, I would like to thank Rob (PEnine) without whom I could not have possibly completed this little project. Thanks Rob! As an aside, Rob had already built his own cylinder from the same materials due to the fact that he was also interested in getting a custom rig together, and the fact that the place he bought the materials only sold in minimum quantities, which turned out to be more than enough for two cylinders of ample proportion, with left overs!
This is a documentation of the construction of my cylinder. The photos were taken throughout the construction of the cylinder, at each major step.
A large portion of the work was done in Rob?s attic studio here in Sydney.
The cutting and filing of the acrylic took the better part of a day (shopping, general chatting, and a lunch break included!). The gluing came next over several days, in stages (Allowing time in between for each particular sub-job to dry).
In total, I would estimate the total number of hours work for a pair of guys to be approximately a full working day, if you had all the materials on hand. This includes drying time for the glue. A curing period of say 24 hours once finished, before use would be ideal.
Check out the overall design in figure 1. This shows a breakdown of the pieces involved. The rings towards the base are glued on to form a thick ridge, which later on allows a rounded entrance with a bit of filing and sanding (Real comfy).
To begin with, we started off with all the materials and tools that we?d need, pictured in figure 2.
We have:
· Acrylic tubing (3mm wall thickness, 55mm internal diameter)
· Acrylic sheet (3mm thickness)
· Cyano-Acrylate glue (Extremely strong specialized super glue)
· Brass gas-fitting nipple (exact type/model unspecified/unimportant)
· Plastic tubing (6mm)
The materials in detail:
Acrylic tube of 55mm diameter (Different diameters should be available according to your fit) Due to minimum purchasing quantities, Rob had to order a couple of feet.
Acrylic sheets (3mm thick) these come in different thicknesses, and actually, the thickest you can order within budget is recommended for reasons which will be revealed a bit later. Also, due to minimum purchasing, we had quite a lot of this stuff.
(Keep in mind that these quantities of acrylic are huge for a single job. You could literally stuff it up on several occasions and still have enough spare to finish with a flawless product.
If you?re just building one cylinder, this is definite overkill and you would definitely want to find a place that supplies specific quantities.
I would suggest that if you are going to go the same route, (i.e. can?t find a supplier who will provide exact quantities) to keep the spare materials in case you want to build an upgrade later (say, if you outgrow it or something) or better yet, get a friend or two in on the deal to dilute the costs and build time! It would be easy to build several cylinders in the same amount of time with a few guys working on them simultaneously! :up: )
Cyanoacrylate ?hobby glue? which chemically bonds surfaces (usually used for putting together model planes and tanks and such, and found in ?HobbyCo? store here in Sydney.) The price for a 0.5oz/14.1g bottle was $8.25 ? way more than enough for the whole cylinder.
WARNING: This stuff is wicked strong. The label says ?Bonds skin and eyes in seconds?, but my experience was that this stuff bonds things virtually instantaneously? I had a bad experience with my fingers, and one of the sheets (seen later) was slightly misaligned due to the fact that the glue stuck fast before I could even position it correctly! You have been warned!
A brass gas-fitting nipple, a reasonably plain generic product, purchased from Pirtek for approximately $3.50. A similar gizmo could be used, but the idea is to provide some sort of go-between attachment instead of gluing the plastic tubing directly into the cylinder. The size is fairly irrelevant although it should be approximately this size (less than 1cm diameter) for several reasons. The first being that because it is the connection between the cylinder and the plastic tubing which connects to pump/gauge, you will have to get plastic tubing of a fitting diameter. There are other reasons such as the fact that it might be difficult to find a drill bit much bigger than this, etc.
Plastic tubing. I bought the 2 meters of this stuff for less than $2. The size pictured is 5mm, but I actually had to go back to the hardware store (Bunnings Warehouse) and buy a different size (6mm) because 5mm was just a little too narrow. Even with this 6mm tubing, it would have been a complete bastard to fit onto the nipple without a little tip from Rob ? dunk the end of the tubing into boiling water to soften it up before cramming it over the nipple ? worked like a charm!
Not pictured are the several grades of sandpaper I used, each ample sheet at a cost of around $1. (I didn?t even use up all of this stuff) You should choose a medium coarse sheet, a reasonably fine sheet, and a very fine sheet. The exact grades I used were 50, 180, and 800 grit.
The Tools:
Jeweler?s saw. These are extremely fine, flexible hacksaw type blades, ideal for cutting very precise, smooth curved cuts. The blades were purchased in bulk at ?House of Jewelery? in Sydney. A plain hacksaw is an option but not ideal as the blades are comparatively very broad. If using a hacksaw, one might be careful of overheating which would cause the acrylic to start to melt or burn. No such problems were had with the jeweller?s blades. These blades are prone to snapping fairly easily, but I only went through about 3-4 during the whole cutting phase!
A Vice. Used to hold the acrylic in position for cuts, this piece of equipment is essential. Without it, you can pretty much forget about getting good cuts easily (or keeping your fingers) If you don?t have access to one, they are very affordable at any old hardware store, the cheap ones can be as low as a couple of bucks.
A drill and a few different sized bits are needed at several stages of the project. A small, low powered (even hand powered) drill is great, since acrylic is extremely sensitive to drilling, and cracks fairly easily if you are not careful. Keep it at a very low speed and take it easy.
Lead Pencil for marking the brown paper-covered acrylic sheets for cutting lines.
Vacuum Cleaner/broom to pick up all the chips, dust, and various other craps that you will drop everywhere. (optional, depending on slobbery level!) :D
Construction:
Step one ? measure and cut the tube:
The first step is obviously to cut the acrylic tubing to a suitable size. Shown in figure 3 is the brilliant idea I had spontaneously for getting a good measure and cut ? use a hose clamp. Tighten the hose clamp down (not too tight since we don?t want to crack the plastic!) and it should form a near perfectly straight edge along which you can score with something sharp like a knife or razor (shown in figure4, Rob is using a small scoring tool he had on hand in his workshop)
You can see what the line looks like in figure 5. It may be difficult to see in this picture, but it?s fairly clear in the flesh. Or rather, more of a white?
With a nice straight visible line done, take the hose clamp off and then put the tube in the vice. You may want to get your work buddy to hold the loose end to minimize vibration, and cut nice and slowly as accurately along the scored line as possible. In figure 6, you can see Rob cutting away at the tube in the vice.
This should result in a nice, reasonably accurate cut. Shown back in Figure 3, I decided to make the total length of the tube a little over 12?. Some may think this excessive, and they?d be right. However, I am already quite long, and have a history of gaining length easily. I wanted the cylinder to last as long as possible, barring outgrowing width-wise! (Which would be great and the whole point) :D
Step Two ? draw and cut the cap and rings:
Before jumping into the explanation of this step, I may say a word about the design. The end cap is cut from the acrylic sheet and should be a perfectly round circle formed by tracing around the edge of the tubing that you?re using onto the sheet ? giving a perfect fit to cap off one end of the tube to form the basic closed cylinder.
The ?rings? that I speak of serve a different purpose ? they are positioned at the base of the cylinder. These rings are simply circles like the end cap, but about an inch wider diameter than the diameter of your tubing, and with a hole cut out of the middle the same diameter as your tubing, so that they can slide onto the tube. See figure 1 again.
These rings are designed to fit over the base end of the tube, stacked up, and be laminated together to form a thick sturdy surface to spread the pressure out over your pubis, and also to enable a very broadly smoothed edge inside the opening of the cylinder, with a little filing and sanding, once all glued together. This design idea is courtesy of Rob.
Note that this is the reason why you should go for the thickest sheet you can afford ? with much thicker sheet, you will only need to cut 1 or maybe 2 rings to form a nice large base. With the 3mm stuff, I decided to go with 4 rings, laminated together, to get the desired solidness. And it is very solid, and allows for a very deep rounded entrance curve.
In figure 7, you can see how these circles have been marked out onto the sheeting, and cut out into separate sections. Once in these rough cuts, Rob takes to marking out the inner line that will become the hole through which the tube will sit. Using a compass as shown in the animated gif Figure 8, the exact centers, or as close to them as possible, are plotted, and exact sized circles are then drawn with the compass.
In figure 9 we see the act of cutting closely to the marked lines to get the finished ring shape. To cut the inner hole it is necessary to use a drill to make a hole through which to fit the jeweller?s blade. The blade must be attached to the frame and tightened while still through the hole, which can be quite tricky. In figure 10, we see the circles all cut out and ready for filing action!
Notice the end cap circle is exactly the same diameter as the holes in the rings. This should help visualize the design a bit better. Also notice that the covering paper has been removed from just this one piece for comparison?s sake. In fact, once the paper had been removed from the rings, it was found that one ring had been cracked badly. Fortunately, the glue we used, as I?ve already described, is insanely strong, and I was able to fully repair this slight error and use the ring anyway.
Filing/Sanding:
In this final preparation step before actually assembling the device, all the rough edges should be taken off so that the rings fit over the tube snugly, all sharp edges are taken off, as well as roughing up the surfaces to aid in bonding when glued.
We see in figure 11 how to take to the internal holes of the rings to make sure they slide over the tube easily with no major gaps, etc.
In figure 12 you can see the rings fitting over the tube very nice and snug, ready for gluing!
In the animated gifs of figure 13 and 14, we can see a simple sanding method for smoothing out the end of the tube ? going around in circles, and pushing in straight lines. All pretty simple :)
Gluing Assembly:
Before you open up the little bottle of glue and start squirting it everywhere you can find a crack, get yourself some kind of disposable paper or plastic to lay down on the floor, and preferably some latex gloves (Yes, this shit is dangerously powerful)
The first step I took was to attach the end cap. Make sure the tube and end cap are nice and clean because dust etc will result in a weaker bond. Put a thin but solid, even coating of glue over the rim of the tube, but be very careful not to let it run down the sides because it will:
a) Be virtually impossible to remove (worst if it runs down the inside of the tube as you may end up with a bump inside which could be uncomfortable if not ugly)
b) Form white cloudy stains where-ever it gets near which can be a pain to remove
The white stains are pretty much unavoidable (They are caused by the fumes bonding to the nearby surfaces, I assume), but can be cleaned off with a standard kitchen-scrubbing pad, fairly easily.
In figure 15 you can see how I have glued the first ring in place, with the second following. The white crunchy bits around the edge of the end cap are caused by paper (I left it to dry on that magazine, with the tube on top and the end cap touching the paper to give it some pressure), which gets eaten up and becomes a part of the glue, permanently. I later removed this with some sandpaper.
The order in which you stack the rings is fairly irrelevant, except for the fact that the ring closest to the bottom should be the best, tightest fitting ring because when you later sand the edge off, any gaps etc will show up as big pits that will need to be filled with glue, then sanded back, to get a smooth finish. The tighter the better for this one! :up:
A drying time of about 30 minutes should be allowed for each ring. Do them separately, it will be much easier this way, because at every step, you have the opportunity to fill in any gaps you can see with more glue, to form one solid ring, with as few air bubbles and cracks and chips as humanly possible.
In figure 16, you can see that all four rings have successfully been bonded together to form one solid structure. You can also see our grotty dog hair laden carpet. The outer edge is still quite rough, but that can be fixed later, if you choose to do so (it does not effect the functionality of the cylinder) with a file and sandpaper (This would result in an extremely slick, professional looking cylinder!)
Preparation for nipple mounting:
Before we attach the nipple to the center of the end cap, we?ll need to glue on an additional slice of acrylic due to the fact that a single layer is not thick enough to support the whole thread end of the nipple (Another reason to buy the thicker sheet acrylic!)
In the figure 17, you may be able to make out where I botched this job a bit. For a start, I didn?t put quite enough glue down, so there ended up being a ring of unglued sheeting. This is not a major problem, but as a perfectionist, it tends to bug me a little.
What bugs me even more is that fact that when I slapped down the second sheet, it bonded almost instantly in that place I dropped it, when I was expecting to be able to slide it around for a second to adjust the positioning and coat the entire surfaces with glue between. No such luck! So, I was left with a slightly wonky second layer on my end cap. Such is life. Seriously, heed my warnings on this ridiculous, cartoonishly strong glue!
In figure 18, you can see an overall view of the cylinder so far. You can also see just how off the second sheet was! Also apparent is the frosting effect caused by the glue, on the inside and outside surfaces of the cylinder. This will be cleaned off later, but for now we need to finish the major construction.
Attach the nipple fitting:
To attach the nipple to the middle of the end cap, we will need to drill a hole extremely carefully in it?s center, using as close a drill bit size to the size of the nipple?s thread diameter as we can find. Personally, my tool collection is a little limited, so I had to use a bit that was considerably smaller. I made up for this fact by going around in circles with the drill, to widen the hole. Just take it easy to avoid cracking the plastic.
Once the nipple thread will just fit in the hole, put a few drops of glue on the thread, and quickly screw it into the hole (I used a wrench to tighten it, to keep it straight and get it in as tightly as possible) Once in, put glue all around the seal area where the nipple touches the acrylic. You may want to do several coats to make sure it?s a solid, airtight seal.
Unfortunately, I don?t have any shots of the drilling process, but with my description and other pictures, it should be fairly intuitive.
See the figures 19 and 20 for the finished attachment of the nipple from two different angles. A drop of glue running off while I was fiddling around and tilting it caused the clear streak on the end cap. Unwise! I could have been glued permanently to the floor!
Smooth Entry:
This is the second last step before you will be able to use the cylinder. Grab a file, and take off the sharp 90-degree angle at the entrance to the cylinder, because it is not very friendly. Make it as smooth as you like, depending on your comfort level and the amount of effort you want to put in to complete this project! Don?t just leave it sharp, though. At least take off a millimeter or two of that razor?s edge!
Once it?s filed down roughly, grab some sandpaper to smooth it out. I actually went through three different grades of sandpaper in order to achieve the smoothest curve possible, and it sure paid off because this thing is mighty comfortable.
Cleaning and attaching the plastic tubing:
This final stage is fairly self-explanatory. To clean the frosting effect caused by the glue, all you need is a kitchen scrubbing pad, and some kind of rod or stick to get in to the end of the cylinder. I used a thick wooden dowel similar to a broom handle. Wrap the pad around the end of the stick and scrub away carefully until all that annoying crunchy coating is gone, inside and out. Obviously you don?t need the stick if the frosting is only on the outside :)
To attach the plastic tubing to the nipple, as I described earlier, can be tricky so remember the hot water trick to soften the end of the tube before cramming it over the nipple. It was almost impossible for me to fit the tubing over the nipple cold, but I stuck it in boiling hot water for just a couple of seconds, and it slid on with absolutely no trouble whatsoever. This kind of attachment results in a very tight fit that will not leak, either.
One last note on cleaning ? even after I scoured off the white frosty stuff inside and out, the tube was still left not 100% transparent. I discovered that if I rubbed really hard with my thumb, it became more clear, so I guess it?s just a matter of buffing the plastic until it?s purely crystal clear again, if you desire. I may not bother. Since the visibility is still almost perfect, without buffing and polishing.
Usage:
There you have it, (in figure 21) the basic cylinder ready to use! I tested it out at this stage, and I must say that it worked much better than even expected. It outperformed all the crappier attempts at home pumping I have ever done by a wide margin. It had a superior seal even without lubricant, and was very comfortable.
It is extremely strong and stable and comfortable. With plain oral suction on the tube, I can attain perfect levels and gradations of pressure. The swell from just a few sessions has been encouraging.
The only things missing from this setup are a gauge and a hand pump. I choose not to use a hand pump, as I can achieve pressures that exceed my pain tolerance with just my mouth anyway (not that I would go that far) and the gauge will have to come later, since I?m still tracking a suitable product down (That?s one thing I would not attempt to build myself!)
I hope that somebody will find this guide useful, even though the construction is fairly intuitive; I hope that this will give some motivation and tips! Happy DIYing!
