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J'ESP

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With the corporate registration in process, I am about to embark upon the task of building a series of stills.

Crazy, yes, but most of you know what I'm talking about even if you picked one from a catalogue.

A simple pot still for the messy stuff. A 6" plate packed/plate column for neutral & in between. A continuous for "filler".

The main pot will be ~1000L steam jacket. Hope to find one at auction.

The plan is to make a full scale paper model of the units, transfer to copper sheet, cut, bend weld/ soldier, etc.

Not sure about the gauge. Heavy yes, but how heavy becomes too heavy to work with and $$$ with simple tools in my garage.

Never done this before obviously, but I believe you should do everything once, get it right the first time, then go do something else.

The stupid question is: what are the basic tools I will need to accomplish this task. Cutters, what kind. welding machines, how big. Hand tools. Books to read about coppersmithing?

I'm thinking wood might make good jig material? Could I have a waterjet cut the sheets from a CAD drawing? Except for the pot & boiler I don't want to outsource parts beyond valves & special fittings. Might hire a pro welder for a day or few.

Any comments are muchly appreciated.

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I too am a do it myself type of person. I built my own chopper from swap meet parts. It cost more than a new one, is worth half as much, but goes faster. It took a long time to build while I found the right parts, figured out what went where, ordered this part, scrounged for some obscure used part, you get the idea. I had to learn new skills, buy lots of new tools and learn to use them correctly.

So...that said, starting from nothing on a large still without knowing what sort of tools are needed, let alone which ones are good and which are crap is a HUGE undertaking. Its not just that its difficult, its that it will take months of full time work to learn these skills, some of them will take years. If you've got a little experience soldering 1/2 or 3/4 copper pipe, you can imagine the difference when you upscale. The difficulty increases to the square of the size increase. You will need tools you may never use again, and money outlayed and time spent will be far better used elsewhere. Especially at this point, in the beginning.

I built my own still. I used a 55gallon stainless drum, had all fittings welded by a pro and bought a plate column also made by a pro. I have the skills to make a column and I have the tools, but buying the components and learning a new set of skills on some extremely expensive materials just couldn't be justified for the pride alone. Let's just say "Discretion is the better part of valor"

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Sorry for asking. I thought that by asking the most basic of like "what tools" I might get some well thought out answers to my question that might lead to some resources I had not thought of or discovered, not stuff like, omg that's too hard, don't do it, cant be done. You don't know my skills or what I am capable of. Take a sheet metal course, learn to use an English wheel, learn how to weld (who said I couldn't) gee, that does sound impossible. Sure, I may end up buying since what I want is the most basic design (the English wheel would not be needed;) and a pro could build them with her eyes closed to save me a ton of time. Go slap someone else, it's not productive at all.

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Holy crap people, the poster is not asking your opinions about building a still, he very clearly asked for recommendations on equipment.

I do believe a certain guy named Tito made his own still; he seems to be doing all right.

Plenty of people make their own equipment, no need to infer someone is a moron for wanting to do it. Go for it dude.

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For my simple pot still I got my copper cut with water jet from CAD drawing. Also had rolling done at a pro shop. Find a friendly shop so you can lend a hand so more work is yours.

Angle grinder is very slow for cutting sheet but is handy for grinding off welds. I used 4 inch and a 9.

Powered nibbler good for cutting thinner smaller pieces.

Good hand held jigsaw with suitable metal blade works well.

Tig welder needed. Size depends on how thick copper is. Too small a one can be very slow and frustrating. May need propane or acetylene torch to add extra heat where you have several sheets meeting at one weld. I used pure argon shield gas but I beleive there may be better.

I used sanding discs with various grades of paper to start polish, then scotch brite wheel then rag wheel with grit wax. Used these on variable speed drill but v.s angle grinder would have been easier.

I have been told alcohol eventually eats through silver solder.

If you have plenty of initiative and time, it is surprising how few tools you need.

Depending on previous sheet metal experience, I suggest you start on smaller parts that are not visible by visitors

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J'ESP, please do not shut "Will" off. He is a nice guy and a valuable asset to the forum. Sometimes what is written and thought does not read in the same mannor. Also, You did say all comments were welcome. Congratulations for entering the field.

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Sorry for asking. I thought that by asking the most basic of like "what tools" I might get some well thought out answers to my question that might lead to some resources I had not thought of or discovered, not stuff like, omg that's too hard, don't do it, cant be done. You don't know my skills or what I am capable of. Take a sheet metal course, learn to use an English wheel, learn how to weld (who said I couldn't) gee, that does sound impossible.

Because the last thing you need is for your fellow distillers to show concern for your safety and the safety of your future employees?

You asked for advice. You got advice. Good advice, IMHO. They're not trying to put you down, they're trying to keep you safe.

Reading these forums, you'd think that safety and competence were anathema.

I'd like for you to be around to celebrate your distillery's 20th anniversary, J'ESP. That's all these folks are saying. No harm in that sentiment.

The best of luck to you, and happy and safe distilling!

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My first reaction was: "gee, you don't even know what tools to use, how can you be considering the design of a pressure vessel?"

After that, I noticed the line that reads: "A continuous for "filler". Which made me want to ask: "have you ever seen a continuous still?"

...and it went downhill rapidly after that, with questions like:

Do you know how much wash it takes to feed even a small continuous still? Do you have staff to operate 24/7" Can you fund just the energy cost?

And at the end of the day, can you compete with ADM and MGP on price?

So, upon reflection, i found that this was a bad little idea, so I spanked the idea and sent it back inside for more consideration.

Good luck with that,

Will

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Sorry for asking. I thought that by asking the most basic of like "what tools" I might get some well thought out answers to my question that might lead to some resources I had not thought of or discovered, not stuff like, omg that's too hard, don't do it, cant be done. You don't know my skills or what I am capable of. Take a sheet metal course, learn to use an English wheel, learn how to weld (who said I couldn't) gee, that does sound impossible. Sure, I may end up buying since what I want is the most basic design (the English wheel would not be needed;) and a pro could build them with her eyes closed to save me a ton of time. Go slap someone else, it's not productive at all.

Sometimes people get a little carried away with their opinions on this forum. You are getting many negative responses because a lot of us probably went down the build your own still path when we got started with mixed results. For example, I've built about 13 stills since I got the distilling bug, and while each one is an improvement on the last, after using them for a few batches I always find more areas to improve and inevitably end up itching to build a new one. Needless to say I don't have a working still in operation as they are all in various stages of dis-assembly. That said, while I've done a fair amount of formulating and test runs on them, I don't run production on any of my home built stills. They are just a whole lot of fun to build. I do know folks who have successfully made pretty good home built production stills though.

There are a couple ways to go if you want to build your own. I would check out homedistiller.org to get some ideas of what other folks have done. A modified glycol jacketed stainless kettle is a good place to start. Good ones at a decent price and range of sizes can usually be found via scrap dealers in most major cities. Using a kettle that was made to be jacketed and boil things in the first place is a good start in making sure the thing is safe. Its also an easy way to get something that already has a man hole and agitator built in.

You can go either stainless or copper for the rest of the still depending on what you are looking to do with it. Its not hard to find talented stainless welders if you look around a bit- you can also teach yourself. Keep in mind though the right equipment is pretty expensive and making nice clean welds is somewhat of an art- generally something you get good at with lots of experience. I've seen a few folks, with the help of a local welding friend, make beautiful looking stills with off the shelf stainless tube.

Copper is another story as its quite a bit harder to weld than stainless, and while its much easier to form, the techniques to do so are somewhat of a lost art in this day and age. The last still I built was formed out of copper sheet I purchased from a scrap yard. I believe it was roofing material. I attempted to weld it without much luck and ended up soldering (use silver, lead free!). I formed all the pieces with a ball peen hammer, sand bag, tree stump, anvil, and bars from a work out bench. Searching for copper working on youtube is a good way to get the basic knowledge required to make an attempt. I made my own rivets out of 1/4" copper nails, riveted components together so they would stay together and be small enough to fit in my grill, and used the grill to preheat the material in order to get a good clean solder joint on everything. Its tedious work, but doable. I spent many late nights hammering away in my shed, which- with headphones and the proper music, can be surprisingly relaxing and enjoyable.

If I do it again I will probably pick up an English wheel and a pneumatic planishing machine. These devices are available from Harbor freight it turns out- they also have a number of other intriguing sheet metal working tools there you can go and look at- but its probably worth it to find a nice used non harbor freight machine if you can. I'd also buy a thicker gauge copper that I could either braze or weld.

My opinion,

You really want to figure out how much you want to produce this year, next, etc and how much time you have to figure out how to build a still and build a good one. Most of us could probably build a nice still with unlimited time but often with a viable distillery business time becomes more valuable than any cash savings from building your own. Also in my case I could have bought some pretty decent commercial stills with the money I spent improving and building my own over the years. I sure had a lot of fun doing it though!

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J'ESP, the still builder I got advice from told me to use "food grade copper" Roofing and plumbing copper contains toxic elements such as arsenic.

Anyone else heard of this?

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I certainly didn't mean to offend anyone, thats for sure. I don't know what everyone said, as some posts are edited a fair amount.

So here goes, some clarification: I have no idea what your skills are, I am dependent on my powers of observation and that is limited to what you write. You say you want to make a 1000ltr steam jacketed still, and I've seen a few of these that size. It's big. It's a huge undertaking after "taking a sheet metal class" or "learning to weld". I'm in no way trying to be smarmy or snide or insulting. I am trying to help you to see the difficulty involved, by allegory of similar experiences in other fields. I don't want to oversimplify what full-time still builders do, its art.

Personally, I've had bad experiences on other forums when I ask basic questions out of the blue. Boatdesign.net I think is one. Where I ask a question about one aspect of a boat design and get told in as many words that I'm obviously not a naval architect or engineer. It's hard to make people who are farther along the learning curve understand what you might be capable of when the questions are very basic in nature that you're asking. With that in mind, some people have a way of telling you things in a way that might not be construed as positive.

So here's a short helpful answer that doesn't insult your intelligence: Rather than learn these skills with lots of expensive materials and tools, try making a much smaller but still usefull still. A book I have is called Secrets of Building an Alcohol Producing Still, by Vincent R Gingery. It's a good hands on book for techniques in metal working for copper and you will be building a usefull small still that you can use to develope recipies with. Just ignore the part of the book where it says to use marbles. Buy some copper mesh or ceramic rings.

Building this small one may make you think different about building a huge one. Or it might get you stoked to try making a big one the next time. Sort of like building a 9' nutshell pram before tackling that 40' schooner.

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When I read things like this I begin to worry about the safety consideration as it impacts the industry. If you look at the historical fear mongering around distilling in this country, a big talking point was that the stills were blowing up all over the place. Just one home-made jobber with some bad welds and an explosion in a distillery and this industry will look back on the current paperwork nightmares for opening facilities as the good old days.

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I can see how stills could explode, but they shouldn't if built properly, even if they are operated incorrectly.

I think a lot of them have some parts of them that are over-engineered, designed and built by boilermakers.

OK, my experience is with building and installing pot stills only.

I recently saw a small column still with the 6 inch column bolted on with about 8 1/2 inch stainless bolts. Looks fancy, but if any pressure builds up it has no hope of escaping GENTLY from there.

The normal working pressure in a pot still is almost zero above atmosphere, so with good sealing surfaces there should be no need for bolts for any parts stacked vertically. The head on my still just sits there on a silicon o-ring. Any excess pressure and it will jently lift. The inspection hatch is the same, o-rings only, no clamps.

Implosions could still occur but these are not as hazardous unless a tall still collapses and falls on someone.

I recently read on this forum that the early distillers used rye dough to seal up their stills so in case of a pressure build up they would come apart gently.

I see a lot of stills in USA have bubble caps, I assume they build up a little bit of back pressure.

Can someone tell me what pressure they normally run at?

What type of pressure relief devices do you use?

Do you have u-tubes full of water that overpressure will expell if you get a restriction further down the spirit trail?

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Hey Pete, I've spoken to people who are taking those Portuguese lawn ornament stills you can get a DSP with, and thinking about running them direct fired. I mostly wonder about this kind of thing.

I've measured the pressure between plates on an 18 tray column and it's never gone over 1.5-2.0 psi.

It's an open system after all.

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Folks,

I have a ton I'd like to say, but there has been pissing contest enough. I agree that there is a huge amount of pride derived from building anything. That being true, safety is most important. although most stills operate at inches of water column, they should be protected from overpressure and vacuum. G.W. Kent sells a nice prv/vac protection in 2" sanitary connection that does quite nicely. neither should play part in a properly built still. they are open to atmosphere. even bubble plates only increase the pressure fractions of inches of water column. I agree that anyone interested should build or help build their still if possible. However, I dont let people even use the tools I build with, they are too dangerous to the untrained hands. an angle grinder will remove flesh quite proficiently. and thats a low level tool. Tig welding stainless is an art. Tig done on copper is a whole different mountain to climb. high amps and high heat. has to be the de-oxegenated C101 copper. The filler rod needs to be pure copper also, even though they say to weld it with Silicon Bronze. The prep work is crucial for everything. the forming of metal can be as simple as a wooden hammer and a blanket. All of this is still simple compared to proper sizing of condensers. what heat source and size. used tanks can be a nightmare of their own. what was it used for in a previous life? is the steam jacket sound? for how long?

All of this leads me to agree with one thing said "One back yard constructed still causes property damage and/or personnel injury, or even makes the news and these will have been the good old days"

Final posed question...."IS THE JUICE WORTH THE SQUEEZE??"

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Great posts. I'm sure this will be helpful to anyone contemplating building their own production still. In the end I will probably have my stills built to my specs by qualified pros. Same goes for checking my engineering. The headache & cost of learning special skills for a relatively small job are huge. After all, this is not a garage still made from repurposd plumbing parts.

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Great posts. I'm sure this will be helpful to anyone contemplating building their own production still. In the end I will probably have my stills built to my specs by qualified pros. Same goes for checking my engineering. The headache & cost of learning special skills for a relatively small job are huge. After all, this is not a garage still made from repurposd plumbing parts.

Well said.

Now that we've all got our sphincters in alignment, the simplest, safest thing you can build uses this recipe:

Grundy, copper steam coil, swan, shotgun.

Done.

Good luck,

Will

p.s. both shotguns and liebigs work best "inside out."

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Will said

p.s. both shotguns and liebigs work best "inside out."

I have always run these hot/steam on inside, do you mean they work best with hot on outside?

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Will said

p.s. both shotguns and liebigs work best "inside out."

I have always run these hot/steam on inside, do you mean they work best with hot on outside?

yep.

consider the liebig. it has two chambers. the inner chamber is the center tube usually carrying vapor. the outer chamber is usually flooded with water.

in condensing vapors, contact area is the most important thing. vapor velocity is the second.

consider the area of the inside and outside of any tube. the outside has more area.

by running the liebig "inside out," we improve contact area considerably, and get the added benefit of the additional area that's the inside of the outer chamber (that's in contact with air). any area that's below the condensation temperature of the vapor adds value to the performance of the condenser.

finally, when you consider the cross-sectional areas of the two chambers, it will be clear that the outer chamber has SO much more area, that therefore, for a given mass flow, the vapor velocity in the outer chamber will be much lower.

simple, eh?

good luck flippin' your liebig,

will

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I agree with what Will has said, but there is more to it.

TURBULENCE

If the outer tube has a large volume the velocity will be low which is good, but there will be less turbulence which is less efficient.

Some of the hot material can get right through the outer without coming into contact with a cool surface.

A liebig (= shell & tube) run it inside-out, will be more efficient if the inner and outer tubes not too different in diameter. Somewhere there would be a formula to calculate the most efficient ratio.

I studied physics m a n y years ago so if anyone thinks this is still not the answer please say so.

Also if making your own shell & tube you can increase the turbulence and hence efficiency by partly flattening the inner tube at intervals. Make every second flat at right angles.

I once tried to run a shotgun heat exchanger inside-out on my wort cooler. In my case it didn't work very well. The slow moving hot wort rose to the highest part in the large outer, no turbulence to mix. It was on its side and a lot of the small cooling pipes would not have been in contact with hot wort. Would have probably worked better on its end but it was not practical. Also the outer chamber was harder to clean and sterelise.

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  • 7 months later...

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