I have used all sorts of rubber bulb pipets for tiny quantities but most of my stuff was in buckets and 55 gallon drums and I found siphoning was much faster and gave better control. I also siphoned most of the solutions in 1 liter, or larger, beakers, tilted, of course, with small tubing 3/16" or less.
Another trick, when removing liquids from settled solids in open top plastic drums when they are sitting on the floor (tilted with a 12" piece of 4X4 wood). I usually just hung a siphon hose (about 3/4" - 1" ID) a little more than halfway down into the solution and let it siphon into another drum until it stopped siphoning (when the solution levels in the two drums are equal). I then dipped out the rest with a scoop made from a 1 gallon round plastic jug. In use, i grabbed the handle with all 4 fingers and squeezed a bit with my thumb on the top of the reinforcing ring. The round jugs work much better than a square milk jug. I held the scoop horizontally flat and slowly pressed it straight down while slightly tilting it, to fill it. I then tilted it up slowly while removing it. With practice, the solids won't be disturbed until you get very close to them and you can drain half a drum in about 15 minutes. See the scoop photo below.
Much of my siphoning was done to make filtering go faster. This was usually when the values were in the solution and the solids were dirt, etc. I let the solids settle and then siphoned off the solution, leaving the dirt in the bucket. I then filtered the relatively clear siphoned solution. This usually goes fast if the solids had been fairly well settled. After all the solution ran through the filter, I then filtered the solids in the same filter paper. This can be as much as 10X faster than trying to filter a whole bucket full of solution with unsettled solids.
Speaking of filtering, except for a few certain things, I prefer gravity filtering to vacuum filtering. In my refinery, I usually had at least 10-15 clean buckets set up for filtering. On top of each, I used fairly large plastic funnels sitting on a piece of plywood with a hole cut in it large enough so that the funnel sat in it about halfway. If the holes are cut accurately, this makes it quite stable and also makes it easy to switch the plywood and funnel to another bucket when necessary without losing any drips. When filtering most things, the solution won't start coming through perfectly clear until the filter paper slightly clogs. At first, I lift up the plywood often and look and the tip of the funnel to check the clarity of what is coming out. When I see it's dripping clear, I switch the plywood and funnel to a clean bucket and re-filter whatever is in the 1st bucket.
This final hint probably sounds stupid but it really works for not losing drips when transferring the filter to another bucket, if you move fast enough. When the filter has slowed to a drip, and the solution is about halfway down, and I want to switch it to another bucket, I pick up the plywood and bob it up and down slightly. Then, immediately after a drip, I bob it up and, at the same time, I move it to another bucket. For some reason, this slows the next drip. Believe it or not.
Here's a typical scoop I made for dipping. It was made from one of those round gallon jugs that you fill with that nasty stuff that you drink before a colonoscopy. Most of the other 100, or so, I have made were from heavy duty round plastic lab jugs. I sketched it out with a marker and then cut it with my pocket knife. Took about 10 minutes, total. Also, it shows how I hold it. Of course, I use gloves when dipping chemicals.
Best of luck Jason, we'll get there, all the answers are here just have to recover them and refine them.
