Mike PLUMPATIRE - a wood-handled Floor Pump

Meet Mike "Only $50" PLUMPATIRE...

... a high volume floor pump for tires 38mm and fatter. It'll fill a 50mm/20inch tire from pancake flat to 25psi in sixteen strokes—and that is worth writing home about.  High volume, low pressure is so much its forte that your arms might grow weak using it. 

BEST PUMPING TECHNIQUE, TO MAKE PUMPING EASY: Pushing more air volume requires more force. SO: Lock your arms as early in the stoke as you can. If you're tall, this may be with the handle all the way up. If you're short, it may be partway down the stroke. In either case, once your arms are locked, pump with your legs. Bend at the knees to complete the downstroke, straighten out again, and repeat. 

This is the most pleasant pump I've ever used.

It is customized for us with a wooden handle, because we’ve broken too many German plastic handles.  That, and the name, is the extent of our input—feeling as we do, that it's best to let people who make only pumps make the calls on everything else. 

Mike PLUMPATIRE is NOT:

• All metal. But the barrel and plunger are. 

• Made in the U.S., Germany, or Japan, or Switzerland.  It hails from Taiwan.

• Our original, start-from-scratch, connoisseur-select pump with all the classy heirloom-style collectability that you’ve come to expect from the Rivendell snobs.

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Its double-head fits presta and schrader valves, no opening it up and reversing washers. There’s more plastic on on Mike's foot, gauge, and cap than we’d LIKE, but it’s used in places that don't get a lot of stress. “In normal use,” Mike may last a decade, or two, or three. And it's only $50. 

We stock the parts on Mike that may wear out over time. You cannot buy spares, or that would become a whole 'nother deal, as worriers would wipe us out. Mike's maker says the head gaskets are the only thing that'll wear out, and that they should last seven years, but we have in reserve every part that's user-replaceable.

This is a great way to spend $50 on bicycle stuff.