Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

Righto, so the time has come for me to start my glasser build...

I originally set out a couple of years ago to build a VM or LM still, got sidetracked by life for a fair while, and when I came back to this forum to get stuck back into it I was quickly inspired by several of the excellent examples of glass columns that had popped up while I was away. This is my first still build, so be gentle :shifty: but I've read and re-read just about every thread going on this stuff and think I've got most of it sorted. I definitely want everyone's feedback though, good or bad - all the great discussion about this stuff is what makes me keep coming back here for more...

It's taken me around 4 months to gather up all the major bits, I tried to spread out the cost a bit and also took time for some items to be available, like the copper which came from the local scrapyard over several weeks. Finally got the last lot of clamps today as well as the last bit of 4" pipe that I was chasing for ages. So everything is pretty much ready to go now, will be right into it straight after Christmas, just going to do some fiddly little bits in the meantime.

The build will be a modular bubble plate, about a 90% clone of the glass duck. I'll have up to 6 bubble plates, as well as a glass packed section on top. 4" out of the keg, 4" RC, 4"-2" reducer then over into a 2" PC, around 600 long. All on a 50L keg boiler with twin 2400 watters.

Lastly, a massive thank you to everyone on here for putting up all your time and knowledge into this site. Pretty much every part of this design is taken from the various threads here, and I've forgotten exactly who to credit for every part. The major ones were bt1, woodduck and wiifm from memory, you guys have helped me out with this in a big way, even if you don't know it! And of course a thanks to 5 Star for the fast service on a couple of my stainless goodies (4 days max delivery time from WA to Townsville, NQ).

Of course, a photo to kick it off...

Good decision to go with the bubbler Stilllearning. With 6 trays and the packed section you'll be getting a good neutral.
I love watching these things start as each tray floods and cascades down to the next level.
You'll love the build. Show us some pics, lots of pics, even if it's a pile of pipes. Show us your copper.
:banana-gotpics: :banana-gotpics:

Ha Ha, you beat me to it.
Good work.

All right, one more question for the bubbler guys before I get building -

I've read all I can find about bubble cap sizing, and I've come up with two versions to fit my design using off the shelf copper end caps and pipe. Just not 100% sure on which way would be the best way to go :

20mm end cap over a 15mm riser stub (6 bubble cap, 1 downcomer)
25mm end cap over a 20mm riser stub (5 bubble cap, 1 downcomer)
Downcomers will be same sizes

I've roughly done the maths on each one - see the attached images for my working. The 20mm caps fit easily with plenty of room around them for liquid, but I'm worried that the diameter of the vapour tubes might be too restrictive. Going up to 25mm caps and 20mm riser pipes doubles the area for vapour to travel, and only decreases bath volume a couple of percent (bath depth also increases for the larger caps - I'll be putting the downcomer lip roughly in-line with top of cap). I also get almost 10% more "edge" room for slots on the 25mm caps over the 20mm. Cost is not really an issue, going up a couple of bucks for the larger caps is offset by needing one less per plate.

So, go up to the 25mm sizes? seems like a winner all round unless I've missed something critical.

Ill be running 2x2400 elements for boil up, switching one off for the run if that helps.





Thanks again.

just did the math of my 2", its 46ml volume and can handle fast flow. most i can push is 3.5L an hour with a single cap with 1/2" riser, but not 92% so if you have 5 or 6 then you will have no problem with pressure. just make sure downcomer is good size

Ive read that more slots can increase ABV (more tiny bubbles more ABV) and your 5 cap one has an increase in circumference but slight decrease in volume but is 3.2ml volume loss going to affect you. i wouldnt think so. Im no expert bit looking at your math i would go the 5 larger caps for the extra slots :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Got th ideafrom here maybe :think:
http://homedistiller.org/equip/designs/thumper
after all each plate is like a inline thumper just small and has a height limit

Thanks for the reply WT, looks like I'll be going the bigger caps. I agree, from what I've read more slots is generally better, and since it's not really costing me any liquid volume in the bath then it's got to be the way to go.
I was thinking about the area that the vapour has to travel through too, I would imagine that more area would allow the vapour to travel slower through the bubble caps (as opposed to the vapour speeding up through narrower openings) and allow the bubbling to be a bit calmer rather then splashing and going crazy. That's got to be better too, right?

Im confused now. looking at your 5 bubble cap design you say

25mm cap
20mm riser

93mm^2 AREA PER RISER
227*5=1135mm^2 TOTAL RISER AREA

is this the total combined area of the risers???

If i do r^2 * Pi i get ... 10^2*PI = 314mm^2 and i googled it here also to check my excell files https://www.google.com.au/search?q=circle+area&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=bB-DVq_QA8TFmQWsjbr4AQ#q=circle+area+radius+10+mm

5 of them is 1570.8mm^2

here is a screen shot of what i had, and the formulas


in regards to wanting to slow vapor speed it may go slow through the riser but speed up between the riser and cap as the area decreases.

If you look on your pic you have riser area as 93mm^2 for 20mm and the circumference for the 25mm cap as 86mm. Also as you can see 5.44 is the radius of a circle with an area of 93mm^2

have i missed something? :think:

EDIT

adding this in to. its the updated volume of your 19mm depth with 5 caps taken out and an extra downcomer making 6 minuses

this is the area with 6 caps and one downcomer with 20mm cap and 15mm riser with 15mm depth for 4"

To be fair you really should be using the ID of the copper tube as the base of your measurements.
Last time i checked 15mm was actually a "near enough" measurement of 1/2" tube because apparently metrification of imperial measurements is too hard for the workers at bunnings and parts interpreters.

Remember that 1/2" is actually 12.7mm NOT 15mm, then you need to subtract 2 wall thicknesses to get your true ID measurement.
Which i think is about 11mm +/- 0.5mm
Then devide that measurement by 2 to get your radius value.

Same for 20mm which is actually 3/4" which equals 19.05mm, but they got closer with this bastardisation, less walls is about 17mm ish.

Also the best way to suck eggs is to......

scythe wrote:To be fair you really should be using the ID of the copper tube as the base of your measurements.
Last time i checked 15mm was actually a "near enough" measurement of 1/2" tube because apparently metrification of imperial measurements is too hard for the workers at bunnings and parts interpreters.

Remember that 1/2" is actually 12.7mm NOT 15mm, then you need to subtract 2 wall thicknesses to get your true ID measurement.
Which i think is about 11mm +/- 0.5mm
Then devide that measurement by 2 to get your radius value.

Same for 20mm which is actually 3/4" which equals 19.05mm, but they got closer with this bastardisation, less walls is about 17mm ish.

Also the best way to suck eggs is to......

i found the 15mm at bunnings and tradelink is the fittings that go over my 1/2" pipe. ID 1/2" OD 15mm but when i do these sums i have his numbers to go off. If im told 15mm then i assume 15mm and go from there

true ID is different for the cross sectional area of the pipe. I did a radius of 50mm for the 4" so i took .8mm off but could have done maybe .5 more. Also when determining the bath depth we need to account for the copper and cross section area inside the pipe, so outside diameter it is. If I i subtracted only from the ID of 5 caps and 1 downcomer i would be out the wall thickness of all of these as the copper also takes up room on the plate making the area on the plate smaller. when determining the total riser area this includes the outside diameter as the copper is taking up volume ;-)

could blend the eggs and use a straw :teasing-tease:

Hi Scythe, I wasn't going to comment as I'm no expert on still manufacturing but looking at your drawings I reckon that the 25mm caps get a bit too close to the middle cap. With bubbles coming out from both caps there will be very little space for liquid to exist so the vapour may travel up with little to no contact with liquid. This contact is important so that the heavier molecules get a chance to condense and the heat from the vapour can liberate the lighter molecules in the bath to the next level up. Maybe consider making the centre cap a 20mm only, or even just leaving it out all together. Just my two cents mate.

Hurry up and build a still! If 0.5mm matters at hobby level then I'm fucked with mine!
And post pics, Don't forget the pics

:text-+1:

Hardie355 wrote:Hurry up and build a still! If 0.5mm matters at hobby level then I'm fucked with mine!
And post pics, Don't forget the pics

:laughing-rolling: :laughing-rolling: me too :text-worthless:

Sorry guys, I didn't intend for us to get into a hair-splitting debate about 1mm here or there... You're right Hardie, it doesn't really matter getting right down to precise measurements, I was just trying to prove one way or the other that the larger caps would be beneficial.

For the sake of correcting my post though -

WT & Scythe - I had been using the table from AS 1432 Copper pipe and fittings which for Type B copper pipe (which is what I've got) gives 12.70 x 0.91 for DN 15 (1/2"), 19.05 x 1.02 for DN 20 (3/4") and 25.40 x 1.22 for DN 25 (1") pipes. I completely skipped actually doing the area calculation myself by using AutoCAD - draw the circle by radius or diameter, get it to show the resulting area and presto. The error was from me simply copying the text from one set of calculations in AutoCAD over to the other, and forgetting to change the 93 to 227.
I also grabbed the geometry for the caps from AS 3688 Water supply—Metallic fittings and end connectors. Using the AS data, which is quite precise, is obviously overkill but this is the best source of measurements I had at the time, not having actually purchased the parts for my bubble caps yet. AS 3688 does not list the actual sizes for parts, just their nominal geometry so I had to make a few assumptions on the caps. I should point out that the other reason I'm being a bit anal about the measurements is that I'm hopefully getting my plates CNC cut, so was making my drawings as accurate as possible.

When calculating the total bath volume I used the ID of the gasket (I've now changed that to ID of the glass, I don't know how I ended up using the gasket originally), OD of the bubble caps, the OD of one downcomer pipe and the bath depth to get to my results. Andybear, thanks for the comment - this was one thing that I was thinking might be a problem with the caps being so close together. There's only 3.5mm between the outer caps and the central one, but almost 9mm between outer caps, and 8mm between the outer caps and the glass. Hopefully this will be enough for good bubbling.

103% increase in internal area is still correct by calculations, but now using the glass ID which has a slightly larger area makes the resulting bath volume even more negligible at 0.04% difference between the two methods. So again the larger caps are win-win as far as I can tell.

New drawings - hopefully no errors this time.





Thanks again everyone for the input. :handgestures-thumbupleft:

I think it's great that you blokes can get your head around the theory and it's a good thing to have these discussions cause that's what the forum is for and experimenting with stuff is how we all learn but if your getting hung up on this stuff (not saying you are) just do what I did and copy the blokes that know what their doing. Which ever way you go you will get good booze. Like was said earlier, hobby level stills aren't as important to get it exactly right, their pretty forgiving.

Good luck with the build, can't wait to see how she turns out :handgestures-thumbupleft:

:text-+1: well said woodduck, that's why I'm copying a fair chunk from your build!

Had a go at bashing out a piece of 6" pipe today to see if I could use it for plates. Didn't go so well, spent ages tapping it out with a hammer and got it mostly flat, but don't think it will be good enough for plates. Still a bit wonky and just seem to be pushing the bends around the plate now.

Looks like I might have to fork out for some nice flat A & E plate, and be done with it.

Going to race out to a buddy's place on the weekend and start carving up my 4" on his cold saw so I'll see how that goes in the meantime.

Use the finest tooth pitch blade he has.
I just about ruined a bit of 4" on the cold saw at work.
Also see if you can slide something fairly snug up the guts of the pipe to stop it compressing in the vice other wise you may find that it will jump out at the end of the cut like mine did.

Righto, thanks scythe.
I'm more of a wood worker than metal so all this stuff is new to me.

Shit don't cut up 6" for plates :scared-eek: 6" is pretty pricey and not that easy to come by. Keep it for a thumper or something.
If you want to use pipe for your plates 4" will do the job.

There's a bit in my thread on flattening the pipe for plates, there might be something there that might help.

Good luck mate :handgestures-thumbupleft: