Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

It's not my idea, its Mac's.
Thats how he does it on his rigs, but it may only work with the thinner EPDM seals and ferrules.
As long as you are neat with your re-sizing it should be fine.
How much does the silicone compress when you do it up?
Does it squeeze out of the join on the inside?

im not sure how much it compresses. I sort of fucked up i think, i flattened 4 inch pipe to make my plates so its really thick copper, i think ill try two epdm seals first if that doesnt work ill try some silicon baling sheet and if that still doesnt work ill cut my plates and try that. thanks mate

I've only tried to clamp 2" together with the black silicone seal with the ribs cut off, mine seems too tall to seal properly as well. Hoping a bit more filing should get it close enough. Tipping I will have the same problem with the 4" when I try that.

If your flanges are to thick I would go for the silicon baking sheets from target as their only about 1mm thick :handgestures-thumbupleft:
Their a bit hard to cut, I found a glass that was the right diameter and pressed down hard on the sheet then cut around it with a Stanley knife :handgestures-thumbupleft:

ok, i got it too seal, on closer inspection the solder was built up a bit high in a few spots, filled it down and bingo, its tight as fuck but its a good seal. i recommend to anyone doing the same thing i did, two seals and the bubble plate between two easy flanges to make sure the easy flanges are really flat and i would use the black epdm seals and not the silicon seals.. thanks again for your suggestions fellas

My plates were pretty thick. I used one of macs custom seals with one bead removed, put my plate in the side with the bead, then placed another customer one on top then clamped the next module on. Haven't had a leak, everever.

A quick update guys. Gonzo had his first run over the weekend and everything went ok,,,,, apart from a small fire ( I wasn't paying attention) and apparently if you make large adjustments to your reflux condenser valve after 30mins of the still being full reflux you get a surge. Gonzo spewed his guts up and dumped about a litre of booze on the concrete. Lucky I had my blower handy and quickly blew the flames out. I did have to change my jocks tho, visions of gonzos insides scattered all over my back pattio quickly flashed through my head.
I have since installed two 2400 Watt elements so no chance of that happening again. You guys are thinking bloody amature and you'd b right.

I stripped about 80L of TPW and am going to run it through again tonight (hopefully)

lookin good. I know what you mean by spewin out. Ive lost heaps that way before. Not again lol :angry-extinguishflame:

Before I cop a pasting, I'll just say that plastic container is there just to catch the foreshots. Yeah a few things for me to learn WTD, it's a different animal compared to my boka

Lucky one mate :wtf: At least you have learn't from it and changed your equipment to suit. :-B
She is looking very nice though mate :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Congrats Strongy! Glad the Gonz is up & running and glad your safety precautions were up to scratch :handgestures-thumbupleft:
You know you have to paint it blue now :laughing-rolling:

Safety precautions, fuck.... I was just lucky my blower was close by. I was pissed on one week old Oaked shine. I was actually looking for the hose and saw the blower and thought this will do. Haha.
No I shouldn't laugh, I'm not sure what might of happened if I didn't put it out as quick as I did. I read a story the other day on this site about a commercial still blowing up cause the pressure valve was cheep/faulty, I never planned on using gas, the only reason I did was cause I couldn't be blowed installing my elements. They were sitting on my work bench.

I am seriously thinking about painting it..... NA but I'm not looking forward to the polishing process one little bit....!

I had a bright idea tonight tho. I think I'm just gonna soda blast it then lacquer it. What do you guys reckon?? It won't be shiny but it will at least look clean. I'm a lazy fuck I know.

I kind of prefer a matte finish on most things.
I have considered getting a little soda blasting gun for my compressor at home and giving it a go.
You do it first and that will make up my mind about the purchase.

Yeah I'm gonna try it on a bit of scrap first and see how hard it is to polish after it's been soda blasted, I was seriously considering copying dog breath with his black oxide finish but I went over his build thread and he said he had to polish his still before applying the finish ( if I have to do that I might as well polish it)

I'll let you know the results.

So I ran gonz last night with about 35L of stripped TPW watered down to about 30%
A little disappointed but I sort of expected the result, I couldn't pull 95% with four plates and. 500mm packed section, I think I need a fith plate. ( might get there with a 40% charge????) no biggy tho cause I have all the stuff her to make a 5th plate just gotta knock up a T and a few easy flanges. I have already made the plate and have the glass and seals.

I'll upload a video of gonzo in action ASAP but I'm sure you have all seen a bubble plates still being put through it's paces before.

I do have a question for the block head owners out there tho. I found after heat up on two 2400W elements and 30mins of reflux I could turn off the RC completely and had no change in abv or take off rate??? (Admidilty I only stumbled across this towards the end of the run when I was playing around, I wonder what would happen if I tried that at the start of the run????)

I do have a question for the block head owners out there tho. I found after heat up on two 2400W elements and 30mins of reflux I could turn off the RC completely and had no change in abv or take off rate???

Sounds like you were running it as a pot. Which might be why you were not pulling high abv. What happened when you had the rc on a small tricle of water? It should have upped the abv but droped the output. :-B

Sounds like you were running it as a pot. Which might be why you were not pulling high abv. What happened when you had the rc on a small tricle of water? It should have upped the abv but droped the output. 

:text-+1:

Sounds odd. More water flow equals more reflux/distillation cycles. . Changes in water flow can take a few minutes to fully adjust output as it the water temp in an RC has some lag time.
How long did you wait between adjustments ?
What was your abv ?
What was your output speed. ?
How much power where you running ?
40% charge will definitely help to boost output abv.

so my run went like this, two 2400W elements took 35 mins to heat up, i had the rc closed until i saw a few drops of booze come out the parrot. i then turned the rc on full and left the two elements on until i saw the plates load up a bit more prob five mins max, then unplugged one element and left it it full re flux for about 30 mins.

i slowly backed off the flow to the rc probably waiting five mins max per adjustment, maybe 4 until i started to get some output. (the rc flow was almost fully closed before i could get any output)
i did notice my block head was hot as fuck with the rc on full but no vapor got condensed so no output, not one drop.... but obviously the rc was at its limit otherwise the blockhead would be a lot cooler

i didn't measure output rates but there was a small dif in abv between a dribble/few drops a sec to a steady flow say about 1.5 match stick size flow. maybe 4 points of abv.

plate depth stayed the same ( i know my rc is over engineered 9 x 3/4 pipes at 130 mm long, maybe i should of copied the majority of you guys and made it 100-120 mm long???

im just a bit confused why i could turn the rc off fully and still get the same take off rate and not drain the plates and run like a pot still. (as i said it was towards the end of the run.... would this matter???)

obviously i need more time behind the wheel but am im missing something???

Just looked through your pics. Some pics your RC is above the packed section and some pics RC is below.
Which way are you running ? If its below it would explain the low abv.
In a quick skim read you mentioned surging output. Is your packed section flooding. How tight is your packing. ?

Your block head should not be any warmer than your RC under full reflux henece why i asked about flooding. - that would account for the low abv and not seeing change with RC adjustment.
:think:
Have you run without the packed section ?

3/4" RC tube may have lamina flow and could benefit from some copper mesh to aid turbulence and surface area. But that does not explain the problems you describe. I know of guys running 8 and 10" rcs with 9 × 1/2" cores without problems.

Another thought. Is there air in you reflux condensor ?
You could try running water though your RC when on its side and then start the run with it still running.
As the output is not at the very top of the condensor there could be a vapour lock in the top portion.

there could of been air in the rc, i doubt it tho. ill check next time
the rc is on top of my packed section, i mocked it up for a photo and only after i posted the pic i realized i had the rc below the packed section.
I had a surge when i was using gas, i obviously had the burner up to high. the rc was on full and i basicly just turned it off as it was the first time i used it and didn't wait long enough between adjustments.
i have not had surging problems now im using electric.
i am sure the block head only got hot towards the end of the run when the abv was really low say 30%, ill play around a bit more next run and post results tho
i haven't ran it without the packed section yet
also now i think about it i didnt really make any real adjustments to the rc untill late in the run and probably didn't wait long enough between adjustments to get accurate results with flow rates vs abv. ill take better notes and post results next run

cheers for the advice guys