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Shortly after graduating from college I needed a cheap mattress and bought a camping air mattress (I'm not a fussy sleeper). Unfortunately I didn't realize before purchasing it that the valve is a completely different shape and it's virtually impossible to find an adapter to connect a "regular" bicycle pump ( Schrader valve ) to the air mattress.
I didn't want to spend more money buying a special pump JUST to blow up the mattress, so I did it orally (yah, that sounds slightly obscene)...this was when I discovered that you can make yourself faint by hyperventilating.
There's gotta be a better way. Here it is.
I didn't want to spend more money buying a special pump JUST to blow up the mattress, so I did it orally (yah, that sounds slightly obscene)...this was when I discovered that you can make yourself faint by hyperventilating.
There's gotta be a better way. Here it is.
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Signing UpStep 1Materials
Materials:
*Plastic valve used for inflating beach balls, swim floats, etc. - you can find these in sports stores or even sports departments of ordinary department stores. One end screws into the Schrader valve adapter of bicycle pumps. (Schrader is the big one, Presta is the skinny one for special tires.)
ShapeLock or other low-melting thermoplastic - these plastics melt at less than the boiling point of water, but become quite hard at room temperature
*Oil - pretty much any kind will do; cooking oil, Vaseline, machine oil, baby oil, whatever
Tools:
*Vessel for boiling water in
*Microwaveable bowl
*Fork, tongs, chopsticks, or other tool for handling hot substances
*Small knife, compasses, or other pointy thing
*Air mattress (the one you want to inflate, obviously, but I think the valves are standard sizes)
*Plastic valve used for inflating beach balls, swim floats, etc. - you can find these in sports stores or even sports departments of ordinary department stores. One end screws into the Schrader valve adapter of bicycle pumps. (Schrader is the big one, Presta is the skinny one for special tires.)
ShapeLock or other low-melting thermoplastic - these plastics melt at less than the boiling point of water, but become quite hard at room temperature
*Oil - pretty much any kind will do; cooking oil, Vaseline, machine oil, baby oil, whatever
Tools:
*Vessel for boiling water in
*Microwaveable bowl
*Fork, tongs, chopsticks, or other tool for handling hot substances
*Small knife, compasses, or other pointy thing
*Air mattress (the one you want to inflate, obviously, but I think the valves are standard sizes)
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First of all, Awesome instructable! And you must get a lot of hits because I keep getting directed back to your instructable while searching variants of Boston to Schrader adapters.
Second, I was just as surprised as dchall8 that you can buy plastic pellets and create your own plastic parts. My girlfriend is always marvelling at how cheap plastic is, and yet how difficult it would be for an ordinary person to manufacture these intricate parts.
Third, by total accident, I found out that plastic fill valves for toilets, purchasable at any hardware store, are the same ~1 inch size and thread pitch, as air mattress valves. They even taper to a smaller size that comes close to Schrader size. This means that you dont have to create your own Boston valve, if you just so happen to be repairing toilet valves as I was.
I would've bought the $5-$15 Kwik Tek multi-valve that DaveB13 mentions, but the shipping costs are all above $20 to get it to Canada :(
Anyway. Your instructable is very insightful!
By the way, now that this "Sugru" stuff that a lot of people are using in Instructables exists, I think it might be a better alternative to ShapeLock for this purpose because it's rubbery (silicone resin). ShapeLock is a low-melt thermoplastic that's pretty hard at room temp. If I try using it to make a valve adapter again I would actually mould it onto the threaded side so it would actually screw on when it hardens instead of just fitting by friction.