Hey guys, After well over 6 months my project is nearly done :D So I thought I would make a good post with lots of piccies to show off my hard work 8-)
Anyway after getting some of the materials together in what little spare time I had I started putting together my 3" DR Boka. First off a had a go at winding my coil at first i had planned to have an 8" double helix 3/8" coil (I know 8" is a bit overkill but i had the copper spare) but my first attempt immediately flattened so i turned to using salt packing and the next two attempts failed aswell with the coil flattening somewhat and kinking at the end. :angry-banghead: . I then decided to pick up some 1/4" and have a go at that and what would you know a perfect double helix on my first go without packing or anything.
But then with the smaller size copper i guessed that it wouldn't be big enough for a 3" column so i wound it back down and put the end back up through the middle and the size worked out pretty perfect. :D
Over all i think it worked out really well i think :D I put a hose to it soon afterwards and got a good flow trough it. After i was happy with that I thought I would get the pieces of the head together so I cut a 400mm section of 3" and fitted the coil through the end cap then put the reducers in place where it would hold the correct amount of liquid in the cup(I forgot what that measurement was 100ml or something :? ) After it was all in place I thought I better get a bit of practice at soldering by making a parrot and my liebig condenser. I only had a bit over one meter of 1" copper to work with so i used 300mm for my parrot and put the rest towards the liebig.
This was my first go at soldering so i thought i did a fair job :D The plan with the liebig was to have it hanging off the water in pipe but i didn't want the water to by pass it so i soldered a stopper in the end of the connecting pipe
After i was happy with that i set to making the flanges to my tri-clovers. I decided to have a clamp at the top and the bottom column so i could have more flexibility in setups in the future. I followed McStills easy easy flange method and it did not quite work out for me :? when I attempted to flatten the ring onto the belled end the ring broke apart and of course expanded so after a lot of swearing, hammering, clamping, soldering, and grinding I ended up with some half decent flanges that were more or less square.
For the 2" to keg connection I had bought a 2" ss flange and I quickly soldered up the 2" to 3" connector and then tackled soldering up the head. The 3" fittings all went together easily but i had so much trouble fixing the off take line. Probably the odd connection and angle made it hard but I had so much trouble I ended up getting my brother to crack out his oxy to get it hot enough. By this time it was about march and i could start to see things coming together.
After this I decided to turn to the boiler. I had chosen to fit two 2200W electric elements and a 1 1/4" tap (Yes 1 1/4" is way over kill and was not worth the trouble but I can drain my keg in under 10 seconds now). I have little experience welding let alone stainless steel so weldless it was :angry-banghead: Needless to say this just led to trouble and it was about this time work took over my life and every time I went to do something something else went wrong and I had to get on new parts :( anyway while i was waiting on fittings for my tap I took advantage of an old TV cabinet and made a wheely bench for my still :D i also wrapped it in some silver wrap to insulate it and to cover my dodgy carpentry skills :D
After a while I got all the pieces together and put the element and taps in but as I should have known they leaked :sad: but I read somewhere that good gaskets could be made from a washer and thread tape. So i gave that ago with the tap and it worked :D I didn't have the right sized washers for the elements but i did wrap the rubber o-rings in thread tape and that helped and now only kinda drips now and then :D I then wrapped the keg in silver wrap as well.
I then put on a fast clip fitting and stole a good length of good pipe from my brother to complete the drainage solution :D
This week iv had some time off so i was able to put some time into finishing it off i started with packing the column. I had got some copper rodent mesh in from the states for cheap but i wasn't sure how to pack it in the column so I ended up rolling it into short tubes and sticking them down the column but then i thought this could just lead to channeling so i made a kinda centering ring out of a bit of 2" scrap and shoved it around halfway down the column.
I then when to find some insulation but could not find anything for 3" I tried around four differnt plumbing and rubber stores :? so i ended up with a couple bits of 2" stuff and made do. I then connected up the water and off-take lines and connected the thermometers and the water fittings and things were pretty much compete.
So this afternoon I did a cleaning run with vinegar and it seemed to work perfectly the coil managed to knock down the steam extremely quickly. Later this week I'm planning to run another cleaning run with some wine and then run the washes I made up a couple weeks ago. So yea any if you want to see more just look at my gallery @ http://s1078.photobucket.com/albums/w481/Spark91x/ and any comments/criticism or suggestions are more than welcome :D