Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

Nice work :handgestures-thumbupleft: I soldered mine direct but they are in need of some love with a file..bit rough to look at..

Sight glasses soldered to modules.....SUCCESS!
I had a really good fit and used my toggle bolt again. Prepped well and put most of the heat on the module body. Ran the propane torch in a circular pattern away from the sight glass until the liquid flux began to steam, added more flux with my squeeze bottle and needle then moved the heat a little closer to the sight glass neck and watched the solder melt and flow almost perfectly. I barely tickled the neck of the sight glass with the torch and added only a small addition of solder.

....forgot this one

Geeze your making it look a bit too easy... :laughing-rolling:

Doing well mate :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Well done. :handgestures-thumbupleft:

I thought the going advice was to only heat the copper, not the stainless. :think:

Tight fitting joins are so much easier to solder, applying pressure with a clamp is the way to go if you can manage it. :handgestures-thumbupleft:

You're right db, that is the generally accepted MO but it just didn't seem right in this case. I reasoned in my mind that the copper sight glass 'neck' was such a small mass compared to the stainless sight glass body that I would burn the flux before I reached a temperature match between the two pieces. Yes, the very small soldering area of the stainless is smaller than the copper but there is the rest of the stainless acting as a huge heat sink. I let it sit undisturbed on the bench quite a while to cool for this heat sink reason too.....it held the heat for a long time.

I think another part of this soldering is having that good fit. When you have a good tight fit the parts will transfer heat better and you won't be dancing the flame around so much to heat everything consistently. You certainly won't get 100% heat transfer but I think it really helps.
Unfortunately not all of my joints look like that. Before this build is done I will post The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

That's some very tidy work mate. Keep it going and it won't be long till she's a goer :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Some real progress!....got my modules done, my RC done and my PC started.
I made a wood cradle for holding my RC during fitting and drilling then used my steel stand for soldering. I used hard solder for the water I/O fittings. I tried to keep fittings as close to flanges as possible and still have clearance for tri clamp without having to 'thread the clamp around the window necks'

Ok you ask what's this stuff?......This is the 'plug' from drilling my sight glass hole and some very large burrs from the sight glass drilling (read hole saw) process. I used the slivers as shims/filler.
I had a pretty good fit between my tube sheet and RC body but I wanted a closer fit. Turns out these slivers of burr were a pretty good filler. I dipped my 'shims' in Stay Clean® just before final placement and soldering with Stay Bright®.
If you expand the photos you will see an arrow that points to the shim placement.

Ready for solder. I was pretty confident that I could get a good enough fit to solder it with soft solder all in one go so I put the tubesheet in place and slid in the tubes. I did some final fitting adjustments and was happy with the fit all around so I did a final cleaning with Scotchbrite® and acetone and 'fluxterup' with a cotton swab dipped in Stayclean®. Here we go.......hours of prep and it was over in just a few minutes......kinda like a teenager on a first date.

RC outlet before solder.Here's the outlet end of the RC.
When soldering either end I placed the solder pieces on the cleaned and fluxed surface then slightly heated the outside* of the RC tube an inch away from the end. No way for me to quantify how much heat I put in but it was probably several hundred degrees. *My intent was to apply additional liquid flux with my squeeze bottle and hypodermic and have it steam and not sizzle. It was pretty neat watching the solder start to melt and flow and make a very nice joint.
Without stopping I immediately soldered the tubes to the tube sheet using the flattened solder. I got carried away with the amount solder on the inlet end but with a good fit because of punched holes, it took only a dab of solder I watched it flow around each tube on the outlet end with only minimal additional heat applied.

I soldered the inlet end first and let it cool only a couple minutes. Yes it looks kinda sloppy but it was my first time.
I wrapped a wet rag 'cumberbund' around it then flipped it over and layed my solder pieces on the tube sheet and soldered as described above.

Took a deep breath while it cooled for 15 minutes then watered up and purged the air out.................
............closed the outlet valve and pressured up to city line pressure of 80 psi.............
NO LEAKS!!!!!!!!! YIPPEEEEEEEEEEE!
Felt like that teenager again!

Good work mate :handgestures-thumbupleft:
Shims are a good idea, soft solder is pretty forgiving but the closer the fit the easier it is. I had to use shims on the PC outlet of my 2" bubbler, bloody fiddly that was.

Skillz! ^:)^

Nice work Hormesis. I'm looking forward to seeing it all cleaned up and assembled.

Now for the PC.

I made a forming jig for the flange by using 2 thicknesses of hardwood (happens to be oak) tongue and groove flooring with a .080 (2mm) thick piece of steel. The hole is just a shade bigger than the OD of the copper pipe. I started the flange on the edge of a heavy piece of steel then finished in the jig. That was for the first end.

Here again on this condenser I decided to solder it up in one go without soldering the tubes to the tube sheets first and sliding that assembly in to finish. I would have been screwed by doing that anyway because I saw during the forming of the first flange and pounding the ring that the sidewall of the tube was taking on a slight angle (see arrow in photo). So before I formed the other flange I got my tubesheet fit the way I wanted it put the tubesheets in. Only then I formed the flange with yet another custom fixture/jig. It's a piece of 1/4" (~6mm) steel with carefully shaped cutouts.

Time for solder.
As I mentioned before I worked a long time on the tubesheet fit and my tube holes were punched so I after hard soldering the water fittings and flanges, I soldered in the tube sheet and tubes all in one go. No slivers/shims (fillers) were required this time.
What is not shown in the photos is that I placed the tubesheets about 3/16" (~4.75mm) from each end.
Again after prepping all of the pieces I cut Staybrite® into short chunks and laid them along the edge of tube sheet. Fluxed then heated away from the joint and let the heat travel to the joint. It heated up much quicker than the RC joints and my solder got a little runny and I nearly scorched the flux. I used the flattened solder on the tubes here too. Flipped it end for end while still hot and soldered it up. Again it was all over in minutes.
What I didn't mention on the RC is that I soldered it in the vertical position......same with this one.

Watered up, purged air, pressured up to city water pressure ~80psi (~5.5 bar) ...............NO LEAKS!..very happy!

Wash is down-we're gettin' close..........

I found these 2" crimp on 90° elbows at the recycle place and customized one for my blockhead outlet / PC inlet. I cut off the ends with the o-rings and formed the flanges with my flange forming jig. As you can see, I put rings on for flanges but the material is so thick I don't think I'll need the rings so I flattened only one of them for now. I had to use a hand file to relieve the area just below the flanges to allow the clamp to get the proper fit. (see arrows)

What do you guys call a particularly good fishin' spot where you can go and catch fish time after time and never come home skunked?.....Over here we call it our 'Honey Hole'
....here's one of my honey holes for certain parts and pieces you'll see later on.

We're almost to the place where the good stuff comes out.

For now, I'm on LP gas so I have to get the capture vessel away from the flame. (I'm working on setting up 240v electric......)
I had some tri clamp flanges and clamps that I ordered online that were the wrong size so I found a temporary use for them here. I cut off the neck of one of them and soldered on a short piece of 1" that I had flanged and soldered a threaded adapter on the other half.

I found some tubing bits and connection hardware in the HH (Honey Hole) and put together an extension tube. (pix to follow shortly)