Hi All. Thought I'd share this with you all.
My friend & I both have a Pure Distilling Reflux Still. I have only been on this forum for a couple of weeks.
My friend has had his for 2 years now. I just got mine for my birthday and am yet to give it a go. My friend & I thought of mucking around trying to make a pot still condenser of our own based on the Pure Distilling Pot Condenser. I'm an Aircraft Structural Technician & thought it would be a sweet project.
Below is a pic of the Pure Distilling Pot Condenser.
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It is made from 2 inch copper tube. I found a 10 foot length of 2.5 in copper tubing in our scrap metal bin a contractor had thrown out so I nabbed it and started work.
I haven't silver soldered or TIG welded for a couple of years & figured that I could probably TIG weld the copper rather than soldering. It worked out really well, using thin strips of copper sheet as the filler rod.
So the next thing was to work out a lid attachment. We didn't want to buy an extra Pure Distilling boiler lid for $28 so I mentioned to my friend I could try knocking up one from copper sheet on our Piccolo (stretching & shrinking machine). I just went straight ahead & formed it without annealing the sheet. Next time I will anneal the sheet to get a deeper concave but for now it will do. I used the Jenny Form roller to roll the 7/8 in lip then stretched it flat back in the Piccolo. Then in the Jenny for the 1/4 in lip finished by had on our metal stake forming table.
Here is a pic of the lid fitted on the boiler
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My friend bought a 3 metre length of 1/4 tube for $17 & rolled the coil at his house then we brazed some brass air fittings for a garden hose on the end of the coil & then TIG welded a cop on the end of the condenser after putting the coil in. My friend also bought a 2.5 in to 2 in copper reducer for $12 because we were going to braze a 2 in brass pipe thread fitting to this condenser so we could use the Pure Distilling SS lid he already had. I TIG welded the reducer on. The brazing didn't work so we decided to just TIG weld the condenser to the copper lid I made. Well, it worked really well.
Here is the final product before he cleaned it up.
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And here is a pic he sent me last night of its first cleaning run with a heap of slops and wines he had left over. This is after he cleaned it with citric acid. Came up looking good.
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It all took around 4 hours and cost him $30. Not bad considering Pure Distilling want $460 for there version.
He will give it a proper test in a week or 2 and i will post back the results here. If it goes well ill make 2 more for the both of us with a little more care & will silver solder the hose fittings on the coil.
Walker, out. 8-)
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