Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

Haha probably, hoping to drill them out tomorrow, should be interesting.

db1979 wrote:I think you're over-thinking it mate :teasing-neener:

:text-+1:

1 down 4 to go.

Downcomer hole is a smidgen too large, gotta check my measurements, no matter, this will work, might lose a couple of holes.

Nice. They make mine look amateurish :shifty:

Flash as Harry mate. Just get a hammer and tap around the edge of the hole that is too large and it will shrink the hole a bit. :handgestures-thumbupleft:

So as per db's and a couple of other mates comments I changed to having the downcomer liquid lock above the plates, making more room for drilling holes.

I still didn't go crazy on the number, I have 344 holes, and this time I took out the downcomer area off the total plate area so my hole percentage of plate area is now sitting at 8.8 percent, and the holes are spaced a bit more nicely.

I also brought the downcomer hole in a bit towards the centre to give a bit more room from the side of the 4" inside wall, so the liquid lock cap clears.

Downcomer hole is a tight fit now, all that remains is to make another 4.

I reckon that's a definite improvement on the first one.
Might not make a huge difference, but every little improvement like that goes towards making a still that is easy to run, pumps out top quality product and that you can be proud of to boot.
It's looking awesome mate, you're not far off making bubbles now.

Cheers Mr T, I wasn't going to worry too much about the plate/hole percentages but after Woodduck gave me the heads up on the search our site option I found a lot of good info and I thought I may as well use it, though I had to brush up on my basic maths a bit haha.

First plate off the mark, not prettied up yet, still making the rest.

Nice, they should work well :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Looking good mate :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Cheers WD and DB, I finished 4 plates/downcomers today, the fifth got drilled but there were issues finishing it, I had spent a lot of time on them today and I'd had enough by that stage, tomorrows another day.

Tested the downcomers under the tap and they handle an awful amount of flow without backing up, hopefully they will work as they should.

Nice Russ :handgestures-thumbupleft:
Making these things sure does take some time, but its seriously worth it when you fire it up for the first time.

Cheers Dan, looking forward to seeing it in action, and sampling the results of course :)

Looks awsome mate :handgestures-thumbupleft:

You will have it up and running in no time.

Thanks Josh, the plan was to have it done by Christmas, might actually happen.

:text-+1:
I am always in awe of you who make their own still/boilers/etc as I don't get to do that at all (too busy) aaaand i have 5 thumbs on each hand ... seemingly! 8-}

Maybe don't be in awe just yet, gotta run the thing yet haha!

Not really progress but I did manage to clean up the parrot.

So now I need to trim the inside of the seals to sit around the plates, going to try setup like a router table, and manually spin the seals while pushing it against two dowel pins. Should be interesting but if it works it will be a much better finish than using a Stanley knife.

Also I stuffed up the bottom downcomer, since I have a reducer connecting the bottom t to the keg, the downcomer hits the side of that, ERG!!!

Ill probably put a 4" ferrule on the boiler eventually so no big deal, can use the bottom T as the riser, just means 4 plates not 5, and I only really made 5 as a backup in case one T didn't work for some reason.