Here are all my attempts at fixing this problem. I spent two hours working on this yesterday and nothing was working. Like a teenager on a first date, I was desperate to shove something airtight on the end of that rod. That's when it hit me:
Plastic lunch bags. I had always been curious about the sealing properties of these. But that's for later. You have to make your actual plunger head first.
You're going to need one of the rubber washers we all know and love. I got mine from Ace Hardware. The one I used was 1 1/4" in diameter with a 3/8" hole in the center and was 1/8" thick. That last dimension is troubling. It's way too thick to be an effective plunger head. So we need to cut it down (Prepare to get lots of rubber shavings on your hands). The easiest way was to squeeze in a vice so you're looking down on the thickness of the washer and dremmel it in half.
Use the fragile 1/64" cutting wheel for this, the reinforced ones are just too thick. This takes a long time, be patient and try to make your cut even around the circumference of the washer. Once you've gone all the way around as deep as the cutting wheel can reach, use a razor to cut apart whats left and seperate the two halves.
There, that's more like it.
Ok, now for the condom part. Place the washer in one corner of your plastic bag and fold it all the way to one side.
Now fold it the other way until you've got a little square of plastic bag.
Now you can hardly tell that's an O-ring, huh?
Find the hole in the center of the washer and poke something sharp through all that plastic. Wiggle it around to widen it. Now you need to get it on the end of that plunger rod. Be VERY careful here, it's extremely difficult to force the new plunger head on without putting stress on the plunger rod. I had mine bow out to the side at one point and needless to say, I nearly had a heart attack.
Voila, your... um, plunger head.
One of the key flaws in my first plunger head write up was the lack of support the pins provided in keeping the O-ring from folding over itself. I made sure not to make that mistake twice.
I used a 7/8" washer with a 3/8" hole in the center to stablize the plunger head. Cut a 3/8" gap into the washer so you can slide it onto the plunger rod.
That's it! Close her up and get ready for action.
The ranges amazed me.
No Bungies:
63'
72'
72'
Average: 69'
Bungies
89'
102'
103'
Average: 98'
And with perfect accuracy! I was almost crying. Let's not forget that's a frickin bag on the end of the plunger rod!
So there you have it; the Condom Bow.
Edited by BlackFox, 27 August 2008 - 12:33 PM.