Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

If your first tee was connected direct to boiler recess would be on bottom of all tees correct?

If you didn't have an intermediate section with a recess then yes that would be the only way to do it.

Cheers,
Prof. Green.

hillzabilly wrote:Oh yeh and one other detail I forgot ta mention was I run the seals thru my mouth ta get them wet with a bit of spit befor assembleing (ok guy's keep it clean :shhh: ).cheers hillzabilly ;-)

You know what I'm thinking don't ya mate. And it involves Cameron Diaz.... :teasing-tease:

:D :laughing-rolling:

Honestly, this shouldn't be that difficult really, and I'm guessing blokes like us that run bubblers could fix it quickly. Anybody live close to this fella to sort it out? If he was a croweater I'd gladly help him out. This is the problem with a hbs selling shit they know sfa about!

Wrong state for me :angry-banghead: :D

Hi guys I've had a lot going on lately so haven't had a chance to give an update on how things are going.
Just to answer some questions, my tee's haven't got a recess but if they did that would have solved these issues and I did buy some black edmp seals which worked much better however it didn't entirely stop the leaks no matter how carefully I assembled the column.
As it turned out, one of the owners of the hbs took one of these stills home to give it a run and experienced exactly the same problems. It seems that the copper plates are simply too thick which makes me wonder how thick they should be as mine are about 1.55ml.
As they don't make thicker tri-clover gaskets it's mind boggling as to why they would mass produce these plates unless of course they were made specifically for recessed columns.
I've tried doubling up the seals with no luck as because they have to be cut so thin they don't sit where I want them to under even the slightest amount of pressure.
I searched every store for silicon baking sheets with no luck and just as I was about to resort to eBay I received a message from the hbs saying they've found a solution and it's all sorted but as I'm working nights I was asleep when he called. I'll know more tomorrow.

If you guys could let me know how thick your plates are it be appreciated as I'm really curious to know.

Thanks again for all the feedback guys and for taking the time to help me solve this, you're all awesome!

Mine are 1.6-1.7mm ,and I am really interested ta hear what the HBS's solution is ,as this seams ta be a not uncommon problem of late .cheers hillzabilly ;-)

hillzabilly wrote:Mine are 1.6-1.7mm ,and I am really interested ta hear what the HBS's solution is ,as this seams ta be a not uncommon problem of late .cheers hillzabilly ;-)

Thanks hillzabilly. Without going back through the thread I'm pretty sure you said that you didn't have a recess on your tee's. If your plates are slightly thicker than mine then I cant understand how you can get them to seal at all considering everything else is 4" standard tri-clover.
Is there something I'm missing?

Edit: Has this problem been mentioned a bit lately here? I'd love to read through the threads if it has been.

A couple of my tee's were slightly distorted from welding,the area above and below the sight glass ,wich I presume is the case for you and others,stainless has a reputation for pulling when welded and with the tee's the side with the sight glass gets a fair bit more welding and heat and this distorts the 4inch ferrule in that area,pulling the outside edge down towards the sight glass,so ifn you have a couple that are distorted in line with each other then the gap is twice as big.I staightened mine by bending the edge back up and hammering it slightly on a heavy piece of plate steel I have,then smoothed everything back by putting fine emery paper on a small pane of glass and rubbing it in a figure 8 patern with a little water,worked for me .Ifn you stack your tee's without seals and plates it may be a bit more obviouse.The problem can be manifested by falling ABV dureing a run with some plates failing ta load to their normal level or external leaks and a lower than normal ABV,I am fairly certain ifn your tee's are dead flat you would not have a problem,and think the recessing of tee's helps ta avoid problems even ifn ya have a slight distortion.cheers hillzabilly ;-)

Just one other thing to look at, But this is if you have no leaks. If you have some copper mesh at the bottom of your plate it may be too wound to tight so just take a little out and roll it a little looser so it doesn't get a air lock and the plates can load up the same.. Mine done this had me pulling my hair out at the start too.
As well make sure the plates don't have a bur on them.

Hi guys. Just as an update the hbs came through with thinner plates and it's solved the issues I've been having. I ran 45l washes of CFW, BWKO, NGW last week and it balanced perfectly. Im loving the yealds I'm getting from it now too.
Just about to run a Fine Scotch Whiskey this weekend for the first time so I'm pretty keen to finally taste it.
Now to finally get started on my heavy peated single malts whiskies that I've wanted to make for years!
Cheers guys.

Great to hear you got it sorted out Mormash.

Cheers,
Prof. Green.