Shop Hacks grand prize winner

Frustrated with the mess dripping funnels and drain pans leave on work benches and shop floors, Martin Davis set out to create a solution that not only captures drips from funnels and pans but also stores items for ready use later.

Davis’ creative use of PVC pipe earned him $10,000 in tools and parts from John Deere when he entered and won Successful Farming’s Shop Hacks: Stock the Shop Contest.

The Elkton, South Dakota, inventor who farms with his father, Tom, and uncle, Joe, employed leftover 2-inch-diameter PVC pipe as the backbone of his drainage rack. This pipe was cut to 10-inch lengths, one for each funnel to be stored.

Next PVC tee fittings with 45° angles (called street wyes) were adhered to the piping.

This pipe rack was mounted at a roughly 45° angle to a plywood wall.

The bottom end of the run of piping drains into a 6-inch-diameter length of PVC pipe that “was previously a chicken waterer,” Davis explains. “I used a saber saw to cut the top off the pipe to create the trough,” he explains. “One end of this trough was finished off with a 6-inch-diameter PVC cap.”

The trough was also mounted to the plywood wall, with the open end angled slightly downward so it drains into a canister on the floor.

This funnel and pan setup allows people working in the shop to let funnels and pans drain in their own good time. Plus, the funnels and pans are oil-free next time they are needed.

The Davis design could be expanded with a second, shorter pipe rack located under the first rack that would also drain into the same trough.

Davis recommends mounting the bottom trough several inches from the wall to allow drain pans to rest against the wall when they are stored in the trough.

Shop Hacks Finalists

Martin Davis' PVC funnel and pan drain system was selected from 152 entries submitted to the Successful Farming Shop Hacks contest. Sixteen semi-finalists were selected from those submissions. You can see videos of all 16 at Agriculture.com/shophacks.

Online readers voted for their favorite ideas to determine the four finalists, Martin Davis; Jim Mueller of Hiawatha, Kansas; Ronald Ruyle of Liberty, Nebraska; and Greg Dropik of Carlos, Minnesota.