6 Week Bubbler Challenge

[Brendan]

How about a pic of your flaring tool? :-B

At least take me to dinner first :romance-kisscheek:

[Brendan]

Week 1 Summary

So as promised, here's a heap of pics to keep the build diary up to date :handgestures-thumbupleft:

I cut up some 3" pipe and flattened it out, to cut out the plates. Tried a few methods, and ended up being most successful with the imitation demel tool.

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Cut and sanded a heap of pieces ready...

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And here's what $300+ at Midway Metals looks like :handgestures-thumbupleft:

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[kelbygreen]

nice :handgestures-thumbupleft: thought you was just sucking piss all week :laughing-rolling:

[Brendan]

As for the flaring tool, I cut a slot the width of the 4" pipe wall in some flat bar. By levering the flare out slowly around the pipe, it does about 75% of the work without picking up a hammer :handgestures-thumbupleft:

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I went a bit far on the first try and put a few little tears in the lip, so found I just hd to take it small angles around the pipe, until i'd been around it about 3 times...then finish it off and suare it out with a hammer and anvil.

After my fuckup earlier on in the week...(I went all the way through making an easy easy flange with 1/2" tube, and didn't realise until i put the thing on and it looked ridiculous :angry-banghead: )

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I went and got 30m of 1/4" (Because Reece were not getting $11.75/metre :naughty: ), and got to work on the easy flanges.

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I put a few flanges together tonight, so its all underway now, I can see her starting to take shape :dance:

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[Brendan]

nice :handgestures-thumbupleft: thought you was just sucking piss all week :laughing-rolling:

Nah kelby, pulled my finger out of my bum...but didn't want to get shit on the keyboard.

Was hating easy flanges all week, but they're coming together now...it should move along a lot quicker this week. Want to get ahead of target :D

[kelbygreen]

looking good you tried the brazing yet? see the map gas there

[Kimbo]

:clap: :clap: :clap: Great work Brendan,
You'll be making some nice piss real soon :happy-partydance:

[MacStill]

How about a pic of your flaring tool? :-B

At least take me to dinner first :romance-kisscheek:

Hope you like servo pies :laughing-rolling:

[Brendan]

looking good you tried the brazing yet? see the map gas there

Yeah mate, brazed/hard soldered the 1/4" rings for easy easy flange.

Took quite a few goes until I realised my 15% silver solder doesn't melt until the copper is basically molten red. I could pretty much just melt the copper ends together :oops:

But it did the job, and the MAP gas made soft soldering on 4" pipe a breeze :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[Yummyrum]

Geez Brendon you're not fuck'n about with this .I'm in awe of your accomplishment so far .Recon 6 weeks challenge ,you might be able to complete in 2 at this rate :handgestures-thumbupleft: :handgestures-thumbupleft: :handgestures-thumbupleft:
Curious did you anneal the 4" before working with the tool .
Brazing copper to copper is cool.I prefer it to solder any day but Mapp has its limits with big shit when it comes to brazing .Solder wins hands down there . If only oxy/acet was as cheap as Mapp. :violin:

Keep with the challenge ,Brendon ,you got our support mate.You're doing it :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[Brendan]

Cheers mate :handgestures-thumbupleft:

No I didn't anneal the 4" pipe. The stuff is soft as butter once you start moving it...I just found levering it out to get the process started quicker than bashing it with a hammer. Once it's out at 45 degrees, the hammer sorts that out and you're done in a minute.

Although it would be great to hard solder/braze everywhere, I've found it a lot messier. And the silver stuff is dull and doesn't clean up all shiny. The main advantage I have thought with the brazing is using it where you will do multiple solder joins...and when you reheat the area for soft soldering, the silver braze won't melt...this was good for the easy flange, and I imagine the reflux condenser...I'm thinking I'll do the plate to the pipe with brazing, and soft solder the pipes to the plate :think: Or vice versa....

[emptyglass]

Just as easy to jig it up and do each end with the same solder, be that soft or hard. Do the tubesto the plate and plate to main tube all at once.

Silver solder is good for the plumbing fittings.

[Linny]

looking good

[bt1]

Howdy,

looking good speed racer!

For the rc and pc I wasn't overly confident at the start . Brazed the plate to tube wall then the tubes in after. On reflection EG has it cos you can solder the tubes from the back making sire they're dead flush so no raised bits for spirit pooling/smearing.

enjoy!
bt1

[googe]

Lookin good mate, your killing it :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[blond.chap]

Brendan you are intimidating me, much respect sir, you'll be drinking awesome whisky, rum, brandy and vodka in no time.

[kelbygreen]

haha seems like the newcastle crew has the same mind set as me. When I start something I go till its done. Well when funds provide it :sad: there is alot in these stills but I think 6 weeks when you on holidays should be a breeze. I think if I had the funds I be done in a week thats working 6-7 days a week :)) But soon daughter goes to bed at 8pm I prob be in the shed :laughing-rolling:

Although I only plan on 3-4 plates to start with and still to work out the plumbing of cooling water.

[Brendan]

Everyone is familiar with the easy flange by now and have seen Mac’s tutorial on this.

Seeing as i’ve been making my modular bubble plate column using easy flanges, I thought i’d put a few pics up of the double ended easy flange to show anyone that might be considering the same thing.

I was originally going to use 4x4x3 tees for convenience, but after adding the cost of them up and then getting my hands on 4” pipe very cheaply (Thanks Linny :handgestures-thumbupleft: ), I took this cheaper route, and am happy so far with the result.

I was not happy with the first couple, but soon got the hang of it and am consistently making them nice and square now x_x

Flared pipe end

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1/4" hard soldered ring over flared end

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Hammer flat, get square, and soft solder ring to complete flange

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Make sure you slide the second 1/4" ring on before flaring the end! I learnt this the hard way about 5 times :angry-banghead:

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Slide the ring down into place, hammer flat, and soft solder to complete the double easy flanged section :-D

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[Brendan]

All nice and square and cleaned up to finish :handgestures-thumbupleft:

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[Brendan]

Week 2 Summary

I didn’t get a lot done this week, due to having a life :violin: So I am really keen to get into the shed over the following week.

I had managed to get 4 modular sections together last week, but some of them weren’t completely square, and the column looked like a crooked piece of shit when I clamped it all together. :o

So the time that I got this week, I cut and made up sections 5 and 6, as well as the blank piece to connect to the boiler. I finally got them pretty square and am pretty happy with the result now.
Took a lot of messing around until my arm was numb from hours of hammering though! :violence-stickwhack:

I went for another trip down to the scrapyard this weekend, in particular looking for 2” and 1”...and guess what I found!!?? :dance: (That big piece of 2" is about 2.4m long)

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It almost looks like someone’s building a still :p

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6 plate modular column taking shape... (and a friggen straight one finally!)

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Have drawn up plans on paper for the reflux condenser...looking at 3” with 4x 1” tubes on Mac’s recommendation. Just a mockup with 2 little pieces sitting in there...

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A lot should happen this week...I’ve got the 3” setup on a mate's milling machine, ready to drop my big 4” holesaw through it and hopefully make some neat scallop cuts to mount sight glass ports. :-B

Depending on time, i’ll be doing what I can of the reflux and product condensers and hopefully have them finished.

Current thoughts are the 2” product condenser with 5 x ½” tubes in it...I have a fair bit of these so can make it fairly long...any thoughts?

Cheers