I found this little (well, not so little) gem at a yard sale some 20 years ago. It's home-built, with a fire extinguisher body, a clothes line pulley with Mamod-looking pulley for a belt drive, a piston made from an old bolt, a cut-down CO2 cartridge for a functional whistle, recycled gas taps everywhere, and who knows what else?
I made a frame for it, removed the plastic lawnmower wheels and replaced them with cast iron ones, scrapped the small flat clothes iron that had been used as a heat source, installed an old pressure gauge, and did a thousand things you have not dreamed of.
Believe it or not, it runs smooth as silk in either direction on about 3 lb of air, and was towed all over by my three-year-old grandson in 2004 and beyond as a favourite toy.
If you look closely, you'll see a lubrication reservoir above the cylinder, and a piece of shoelace leading from it that licks the piston with a film of oil. Whoever made this was a mixture of crazy and genius, I think.
I've put quite a bit of time into it and kept it all these years just because it's so strange....  
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Well that's certainly different
It looks like the boiler is make from copper pipe fittings.
It looks like the boiler is make from copper pipe fittings.
The end caps are certainly pipe fittings; the centre section I'm not sure of.
It's really a horrible mess, what with its blobs of solder and junk components, but as I said, it actually runs and it did have kid appeal. It's unbreakable, too.
