Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

So I've been lurking here for a while, added a bit here and there, and figured it was about time to make it official.
Through the extreme generosity of the members here i have a received some 2", 4" and various other bits and pieces (redux, royboy73 and Shiftynev )
And with them I have set about fulfilling my current distillate related dream of a 4" bubbler.
My background is fitter/machinist (i'm more machinist than fitter) but have never soldered apart from the 2-3 lessons we did back at tafe during my apprenticeship

Progress is slow but rolling on.
To date ive managed to cobble together 90% of an RC, 40% of some 2" bubble caps and about 85% of a PC.
here are some pics (lets see if this works):

here we have my initial stage of RC construction, initially it was going to be 120mm-ish tall.

after shortening the 4" outer pipe to 80mm-ish and making up some end plates i followed Mac's guide for soldering the bottom plate.
The i decided i wanted to put in a baffle so that my water didn't shortcut half my RC.
Given that it was so "small" (atleast in my mind) now i wanted to ensure as much cooling as possible.
You can see what i thought was my first mistake of my build.
I soldered the baffle to the wall such a rookie error, this only highlighted to me my actual first error, not drilling my end plates and baffle at the same time.
So previously all my vapor tubes slid in nicely and now all of them were out of alignment by about 3-4mm :angry-banghead:
So then after spending about 2hrs filing my baffle holes to allow my tubes to slide through i had the brilliant idea of de-soldering the baffle completely.
Then i realised that the baffle needs to be secured some how, so i cut a 40mm-ish length of 3/4" and split it so it would slid over my centre vapour tube and stop it from falling down during use, i did the same on top of the baffle plate so that it would not flap around.

now that i had my baffle sorted it was time to close it all up.
I tried using Mac's method to solder the top plate but it proved to difficult once the baffle was in so i just soldered what i could get to by poking a longer length of aquasafe100 through the vapour tube holes in the plates.

Top plate
Only one section about 15mm long was missed but i soon fixed that

Bottom plate


This is the style of drill i used to make all of my holes for vapour tubes and water connections (the aptly named Sheet-metal-drill grind).
I ground it my self and it worked fantastically (good thing i paid attention during my apprenticeship), the centre point stops it from wandering around your plate and the elevated points cut through the plate before the center section of the drill eliminating the risk of tearing.
it leaves you with a little "slug" or disk of copper at the end and a minimal amount of swarf.

Here is my RC mostly cleaned up ready for easy flanges i am yet to finish


My water connections are made to increase turbulance within the RC, hopefully.
I probably went too large on the cross hole, its 8mm.
My water connections are offset so that i can use the braided 90* elbow fittings.
When i get a bit more time i will solder my water connections in and give it a pressure test.

The astute among you may notice that i drilled the holes for my water connections after i had soldered in all my vapour tubes.
This is where my specially ground drill comes in to play again, and and i used a milling machine so that i could not pull it self in as it broke through, not that it did anyway.

My PC was a pain.
2" OD with 4x0.5" vapour tubes.
4" was heaps easier to work with
The amount of solder i've lost inside my PC is shamefull.

This is the bottom, i just ground the vapour tubes on a linisher while turning it in my hand, if i think about it having the points away from the centre would be better and would be less prone to air-lock but its done now and it will still work.
Its a bit hard to see due to over-exposure but i soldered it from the outside, its going to be a bugger to clean up, i think i will just leave it for now.
The top has been linished flat.

2"bubble caps were made and still need to be slotted but that fun job is for another day

They are only 40mm high so i might have to make some more if i want a deeper bath depth, they will do for now tho.
I've got a good design (i feel) for the up-commers i just need work to get some bigger stainless bar in that i can experiment with.

So there you have it.

Behold my dream coming to fruition.

:clap:

looks nice :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Well done :clap:

Nice work mate!

what's the plan for the column? All copper I hope, with those metalwork skills :handgestures-thumbupleft:

:handgestures-thumbupleft: :clap:

Yeah aiming for most if not all to be copper.
Might go stainless for the 180 over the top if i don't go for a blockhead design.
I've got enough 4" to have 4 plate modules, i think.
I'm going to try and make my own still mount as well, might make it 5" so i can fit my arm through it when cleaning.
Luckily i think we might have a lump of 6" stainless that i can experiment with at work.

Go for the blockhead :handgestures-thumbupleft:

We don't see enough good copper builds any more! Will be keeping an eye on this one'

Zak Griffin wrote:Go for the blockhead :handgestures-thumbupleft:

We don't see enough good copper builds any more! Will be keeping an eye on this one'

:text-+1: Finally a nice full copper column being built. :handgestures-thumbupleft:

And yeah go the block head. be different. :D

Edit: BTW welcome aboard mate. :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Welcome and nice work :handgestures-thumbupleft: :D

Like your idea of pushing the water sideways in the RC.

DBV

Welcome bro. Nice work so far. :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Welcome mate :handgestures-thumbupleft:

If you keep posting your progress pics here it will be moved to the build thread, maybe you can knock woody off the front page ;-)

Nice drill sharpening skills mate :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Long time since last post and I've only progressed a little, but i have learnt some valuable lessons.

So a while ago I bent up some 4" easy flanges, had a go at silver soldering them together with the oxy-set at work.
Valuable lesson 1:
Oxy-acetylene burns hot.

I melted part of the ring where I was trying to hard solder by holding the torch too close.
This ring also let go when I flattened it under the press at work, balls.
this one will probably end up re-purposed into a 2" flange for my PC.

On the 2nd attemp i held the torch much further back, about a foot away actually.

This one went better, and stayed together after being pressed.

Then I finally got around to cleaning up my 2" bubble caps.


Now that I had run out of 1/4" copper and am yet to grab some more from the scrappies I decided that it would be a good time to start work on a parrot.
So using the post on making copper reducers and my old high school compass i set about making a 1" to 2" cone for the head of my parrot.
First I made the pattern on paper and cut it out.


Then I traced it onto a bit of 2" flattened copper pipe.


Cut it out using these bad boys.


And then set about bending it into a circular shaped object.
Sorry no progress shots of this as it only took about 5mins.
Here is the mandrel I used, its 400mmish long and goes from ~12mm to 32mm-ish.


What I ended up with after said 5mins

Not exactly circular but good enough for me and you will see why later.

What I forgot to account for was the thickness of the plate I was using. <------ Valuable lesson 2.


Doh!, so i pulled out my small rats tail needle file and spent the new 2hrs going around and around till it fit over the bit of 1" pipe.

a day or so after i took it to work to silver solder the cone.


Not too much excess to clean up i thought, man was i wrong. <------ Valuable Lesson 3
About 1hr spent so far and i'm still not happy with it.

Me being me and liking circular things to be circular I made up this little press tool.

Like so.

And then you squash it together and he presto, its circular.

And thus end another exciting installment.

I've got some more photos on my phone of a little bit more progress with the cone but currently my phone is elsewhere so i will put them up another time.

Love your work, Your rig is going to be nice and clean.

excellent start

Hello again viewers.

It time for another exciting installment... :shifty:

To date I have fitted the one successful easy flange to my RC, im yet to solder it as i still might modify some 4" ferrules for my connections.



I'm about 95% finished my parrot construction.


the body of the parrot is one inch diameter and its 250mm long to allow for some copper mesh shock absorbing at the bottom.
I profiled both pieces of 1/2" tube so it sat nice a neatly against the 1" tube for soldering and so that it did no protrude into the 1" tube an endanger the alcohometer.

And then stuck it together.

cooled it down and tested for leaks at the same time (I'm so efficient).


I couldn't find my specially ground drill bit at the time and decided to just use a normal bit, and it grabbed and slightly tore the cone i made. :angry-banghead:
it also deformed the cone but i took the photo after i squashed it in my little press tool, so i was able to save it.

Here it is all cleaned up after the incident, I elongated the hole to make the damage less noticeable and sort of profile the hole so the drip tube (beak) would site nice and close for soldering.

I think you will agree that i was a little too zealous with the drop angle.


I fixed the drop tube angle today at work with some hard solder so it wont give me grief when i solder the parrots head on to its body.
but those photos are on my phone and i will put them up tomorrow.

Your work is looking awesome mate :clap:

So as promised here it is.


I tried to see if the lead pencil trick worked for hard soldering like it does for soft soldering.
It either does not or i did it wrong.
Lot of clean up required after this step.


Didn't come up too bad after a good cleaning.


And here we have its final angle of dangle.

Once i finish my parrot i will start on my boiler.
Im using a squat 50L keg

I'll have you know i only broke 1 drill-bit making this hole and funnily enough it was the larger sized one (about 2mm), had a win with the 1.5mm drill tho as you can see.
Do people clamp directly to this spigot or do they install a proper 2"ferrule.
My plan for the boiler is to have a 2" fill port/sight glass, 4" mount, 2"drain and 2 clamp in 2400W elements.

I found that it's best not trying to drill a hole in the keg to remove that ring. I just used a holepunch to make a dint in it, then carfully "smashed" it with a hammer + hole-punch to get it out.

Found some 75x75x10 stainless angle at work so i lopped a bit off for myself to make some 2" ferrules (and smaller).
I'm making them from angle because we don't have any solid or hollow stainless bar that i can play with at the moment.

So because i can i set them up on the CNC mill at work while i was messing with paying jobs for customers.


That night i test fitted them to my PC

Like a glove


Rounded them off today.


And i left them at work so that it for photos tonight :angry-banghead:

The boiler is still going ahead and this is also a trial run for making my own still fittings.