I can live without my refractometer but if you come anywhere near my thermopen you’ll pull back a bloody stump 
I’m an autosiphon disciple but I’ve recently got everything together I need to push the transfers with CO 2 ala Drew. I just haven’t gotten around to putting it all together yet.
Like others here, I’ve long moved from plastic to stainless for my racking cane. It only took me braking one auto-siphon (on it’s second use) and two plastic racking canes after roughly five or six uses.
I’m too chicken shit to go anywhere near pumping CO2 into the fermenter so it’s carboy cap/sanitary filter combo for me 
To be perfectly honest, this setup is ideal except for the need to lift the carboy up above the target. One of these days I’ll look into a pulley system!! :-\ Either that or go CO2
CO2 should be harmless. I’m pretty sure it’s going to force the carboy cap off of the carboy before the carboy will break. I might have to test that with one of my bad carboys.
carefully!
I wonder how many PSI are you creating with by blowing into the sterile filter method of starting the syphon? granted it’s not constant but…
I used to know how to do this calculation . . . figure you’re raising it a foot or so since you only have to get it to the top of the racking cane. And the surface area being raised is less than a square inch. I can’t remember the equation but I would guess it is 1/2 psi or less.
And you call yourself a scientist!
One PSI will raise a column of water 27 inches and a fraction. Diameter as not come into the equation, as the prfessue works on the surface of the fluid.
Do I? :) It’s an engineering question anyway. ;D
Fair enough - but about a half psi for a foot, like I guessed. I’ll take it.
FWIW, I’ve discovered that the largest size Fermtch autosiphons usually fail when the inflow valve breaks or gets dislodged. After wasting way too much time trying to reseat the little plastic widget, I discovered that a cleaned and sanitized penny makes an excellent replacement. Just make sure to remove the penny after you’re done and rinse and dry it carefully until you need it again.
Rule of thumb for replacement is every 6 months for tubing (earlier if it clouds or shows scratches) and every 12 months for auto-siphons. I’m really excited to learn about the stainless steel/carboy cap solution. I’m sick of lifting full carboys and less than reliable auto-siphons!
Sounds like you need to videotape (do people still use that word?) your own episode of mythbusters.
Or, if it doesn’t go as well, Jackass…
I think it would be fun, but I don’t have a video camera. I might have to do a webcast.
I can live without either of those, but if you take my Jet carboy/bottle washer, you’re in for a world of hurt.