Hack a Toilet for free water.

Step 5 Faucet

The faucet is made from copper tubing bent into an upside down "J". To bend the tubing without kinking it, tightly wrap the wire around the section to be bent and carefully bend it with your hands, retightening the wire occasionally. Trim off the extra tubing with a tubing cutter. Drill a half inch hole with a spade bit, 3 inches away from the large hole in the wood lid. Force the long end of the copper "J" into the hole, friction should hold it in place.

Comments

[Prometheus]

Good idea with the spring idea, but another method would be to bend it around something hard, but with an even curve. You could either find a nice large cold-water pipe, portable propane tank, or even a tree. This would be called "mandrel bending". Ideal bend to start is roughly 3 inches of bend radius for every half-inch of tubing thickness.

[jumpfroggy]

Mandrel bending? You mean this? It's a lot more than bending it around something hard, in which case most thin-walled pipe will crease; not something you want. Mandrel bending involves having a mandrel (small metal object) inside the pipe to force the insides not to collapse or warp. That way you have a constant diameter, vs. a slightly smaller stretched curve, vs a completely creased an botched job.

If you do want to mandrel bend, you'll have to find more equipment/machinery than just a tree or propane tank. It may work that way, but it isn't called mandrel bending.

[Prometheus]

My mistake for posting while drunk lol. New instructable on how to prevent one's drunken self from posting and risking making a fool of one's-self coming soon... In any case, wouldn't using 1/8th inch tubing be more ideal, to match the flow of the bowl fill-tube? It looks like you used 1/4-inch,. which is largely excessive for the flow that should be expected. Also in that case, you can make bends more easily without risk of kinking in 1/8" copper tubing, as it bends more like copper wire and is far more manageable....however 1/4" might be more sturdy post-construction... I might add that I have bent tubing as large as 1/2" within a 4" radius using nothing more than a rounded groove in a wooden post and have suffered no loss of diameter or roundness whatsoever, this is what I was implying. In any case, worth a try in my book, where a sink is otherwise not easily available.

[jumpfroggy]

Hah! Yeah, friends don't let friend post drunk. Good post about bending big tubing though, I've never tried bending tubing and it's good to know that you can bend it without creasing. Also, the 1/4 tubing would probably make the water flow faster/harder, which may not be a good thing if you just want to use it for your hands (splashing, etc). I would really love to make one of these, but I just know my friends would not be comfortable using it. Even though I know it's clean, I still cringed when he drank from the faucet.