by Cooperville » Tue Nov 29, 2011 10:02 pm
OK guys ,
(and i apologize upfront Mcstill)no hard feelings!! :angelic-pink:
As you know i very new to distilling and havent even done my first run (fermenting a express wash to clean and trial out the cranky ol man still which i bought on ebay
now i dont want to upset anyone or the like as i really want to become a continual member with input and a lot of learning with this forum but this is the corespondence that i have had with bob the cranky ol man.
Pleae note i didnt ask if i could post this and I am not an aquaintance of his eitherjust trying to help a fellow distiller
Please dont shoot the messenger :text-thankyoublue:
so here :AND I QUOTE:
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Hi mate,
Im glad you emailed me. The fellow over there (McStill I think) is full of shit and delights in rubbishing everything about my stills. Please note that he is also in the business of selling stills and so he has a financial interest in what he is saying, also note that he and his little group of friends are very quick to offer to make a still for you.
As for the solder, I use a product called Aquasafe100 for the soft soldering on the units which is totally lead free, I also use lead free silver solder on the brazed joints and acid free fluxes.
In the early days, I (like everyone else) used lead/tin solders on copper, just the same as every plumber in the world has done and in many cases still do on copper water plumbing in our houses however, I was very diligent only to use that solder on the water side of things only and not on the alcohol side, even on my early stills everything on the vapor side was totally lead free. I even had a mate who is an industrial chemist check for lead in the distillate and of course, there was no lead in it because it is physically impossible for it to get there.
Anyhow, your still has no lead in it at all and you will have no troubles stabilizing the temperature if you follow my instructions. If you need any help with working your gear out, please let me know & Ill sort you through it and dont refer it to those fellows as all they will do is put shit on you & the still I have made. Sorry that you have been discouraged by them to some degree but dont let it worry you.
Keep in touch
Cheers, Bob
and this is my next email from Bob in return of my contact to him
No worries mate,
When its all boiled down, I think its about money and jealousy. Its not hard to tell from the ebay site that an awful lot of people have bought a still from me and if they are buying them from me, they are not buying them from over there.
I have no doubt that the fellows over there build some incredible stills but its fairly petty to carry on the way they do.
I know that you will do well with my still, they work just fine. Ive used nothing but that type for years now & I couldnt be happier with the results I get. By the way, I dont own a still, if I want to run a batch Ill just grab the closest one and use it, I figure it is a form of quality control, so if Im all about poisoning people, Im drinking the same poison.
I did try to talk some sense to those fellows some time back but they just put crap on me so I gave up. I pretty soon learned that it wasnt about anything but rubbishing the competition for the sake of market share.
One thing about being a bit older is that I have been able to see a few things & how they work. Use of lead is a great example of that. They carry on about it, but in reality, it isnt really a fraction of the problem people make it out to be except when it is in dust or vapour form. I know a fair bit about it as I did a lot of lead casting years back and wound up with some very high lead levels in my blood. All of that was vapour related and when I stopped exposing myself to the vapour that came from the molten metal, my levels dropped to zero and have remained that way ever since.
I think back to how as kids how we used to run around all day with a mouthful of slug gun pellets shooting at things and each other, and that fishing sinkers were all lead as was the solder we used when making crystal sets. Lead pencils had lead in them as did die cast metal cars and pewter plates and tankards and hip flasks as well as paint. Lead was (and still is) used in domestic water plumbing. Lead’s symbol on the periodic chart is Pb from its name in Latin “plumbum” from where we get our word “plumber” & “plumbing”. I could go on for a dogs age about lead flashing on roofs, lead washers on roofs and lead sealed water tanks that collect water from the same roofs that we have drunk from all our lives.
Major problems with the stuff came in vapour form as it was used in petrol as an upper cylinder lubricant in engines, that was and still is bad news, particularly in concentrated levels like city traffic. If lead was really such a problem why is it still available at bunnings and every other plumbing supply as flashing? Why do they still make and allow lead solder to be used in domestic plumbing under the Building Code of Australia?
Anyhow now a days, I dont use lead solder simply because people dont like it and I was tired of trying to explain to people that the little lead solder that I did use was totally separate from the alcohol side and there was no fear of any contamination, but, the folk over at the other site just made out that I was a crazy old fool.
Even the fact that all the major commercial distilleries were still using lead jointed copper stills up until 10 years ago couldnt stimulate them to sensible thinking. That on its own should be enough to let people know that a 12 year old bottle of any spirit (still on sale today) was made with lead jointed equipment.
Like I said before, Im really glad that you checked with me. I read of one fellow over there who trashed his unit because of what they had said even though he was getting good results, I wish that he had given me a yell.
To be really honest, I think the biggest health risk when making spirits is the damage you can do to your liver. That will kill you long before any other form of poisoning could. The home made stuff is super cheap to the point of almost costing nothing, its very easy to drink and doesnt punish you with hangovers therefore it is very easy to put abusive strain on your liver without even noticing that you are doing it. There’s the real worry! Please, be careful of that!
Well, there’s my big whinge for the day!
Cheers,
Bob
(lead free)
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OK so i hope this helps other distillers about the cranky ol man and if you are like me actually believe the guy as who would put so much effort into something and put his name against it with an inferior product as you can see i am serious about my build and ran it last night with h2o which worked really well
the attachment i got for the needle v/v assembly are as follows:
olive joiner about $10 bucks( reece plumbers)
a plastic barb $1.10 (pond shop)
plastic hose to fit $2.50(pond shop)
Needle v/v brew craft about $15
plastic garden hose joiner about $ 2 bucks
paid 199 for the still and me and a mate put the boiler together which i will use after the still upgrade if i need one later on
got the tri clamp fittings from smileys.com and hillbillystills.com good sites for the begginner
and all this works a treat to steady the flo of cooling water to the LM
i will post further as i start my first run and share my experience as you all have as i learn more
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