My re-use projects--- and yours as well

Christopher, nice project.  And your project reminds me…  One day I went to one of our valley’s auxiliary recycling places, much smaller than our regional-district dump. The place I went to is just a limited parking area with five recycle bins. Though they’re not supposed to, some people leave miscellaneous junk on the ground — children’s clothes and toys, old VHS videos, what have you. I found that someone had left an 11-gallon air tank with an outlet check valve still on it, but the compressor unit itself removed.

Looked it over, it seemed to have no cracks or rust where air might leak and it had good wheels & handle, so I brought it home.  I have a compressor, but it’s stationary in my welding/grinding area.  I figured if I could feed air into the little tank (and release it out as desired) that I could use it as a portable to run my tacker from.

I bought a few brass fittings for the tank, including a second check valve to contain air and allow control.  The pic shows my compressor setup feeding the red portable tank. Not shown, but the little tank's outflow hooks up to pneumatic hose lines.  First project I used it for was with my stapler, to re-roof one of our sheds.  Also comes in very handy for pumping up vehicle or cart tires.

these are awesome guys.  Joel, you can have more air volume/ storage and/or a portable air pig tank.  one mans junk is another mans treasure :D good work guys

Here is my favorite use for old pressure washer pumps that get frozen and cracked.  This is the generator I used Saturday to peak my batteries after weeks of darkness here.

Joel Bercardin wrote:
I bought a few brass fittings for the tank, including a second check valve to contain air and allow control.  The pic shows my compressor setup feeding the red portable tank. Not shown, but the little tank's outflow hooks up to pneumatic hose lines.  First project I used it for was with my stapler, to re-roof one of our sheds.  Also comes in very handy for pumping up vehicle or cart tires.

I have some spare tanks like those,how long could you run a brad nailer off a tank like that?

Dale Hodgins where do you put out ads?

William Bronson wrote:

Joel Bercardin wrote:
I bought a few brass fittings for the tank, including a second check valve to contain air and allow control.  The pic shows my compressor setup feeding the red portable tank. Not shown, but the little tank's outflow hooks up to pneumatic hose lines.  First project I used it for was with my stapler, to re-roof one of our sheds.  Also comes in very handy for pumping up vehicle or cart tires.

I have some spare tanks like those,how long could you run a brad nailer off a tank like that?

I was getting maybe 45 minutes, with the tank's starting charge being around 85psi (that worked fine with my staple tacker). But clearly it will depend on your rate of fastening. I was selecting specific cedar shingles (from random sizes in the bundle) for specific positions on the roofs of sheds, so maybe my fastening rate was somewhat slower than it would have been in other applications.

I've used the tank a lot for pumping tires (car, tractor cart, truck) when the vehicle was too far from my stationary compressor (and line-current outlets). Used it last summer for things like cleaning out my table saw with compressed air. I'm still glad I have this tank, and glad I did not have to distort our household budgets to purchase a portable compressor that I'd not be using very often.