Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

Here's a bit of a run down how I build a shotgun condenser, I only use soft solder regardless of all the hype about brazing & other methods.

My easy flanges also only consist of the 1/4" flattened ring soldered on, there are other methods but this is the easiest to keep square & a lot less work than the flaring methods being used by some people. Regardless of what method is stronger I have never had my method break, crack or leak & can swing a keg around on one.

First up is to mark up and drill your end plates leaving the piece your going to cut on, this makes clamping and drilling the plates easier than if you cut the discs first.



Next you want to cut the disc out to the inside diameter of the pipe keeping it a fairly firm fit, when you cut you pipe with pipe cutters it leaves a bur on the inside edge that will act as a retainer for you disc.



Now to solder these discs in is a pretty simple task, flux the inside of the tube and drop the disc in then push it down with the handle of your hammer. You want a nice flat surface under it that doesnt soak up the heat so I use a ceramic tile on a paver.

Place 10mm bits of solder around the edge on the inside of the pipe once youve got it fluxed, push the solder against the pipe wall with a brazing rod or something similar until you end up with something looking like this.



Heat the outside of the pipe with a fairly high flame and keep it moving all the way around the pipe, you want the whole area to be soldered hot instead of just holding the torch in one place.



Once your solder is melting & flowing use the torch to steer the flowing solder around the joint, keep the torch moving until the joint is full. If you ended up with a few spots where the solder didnt meet then just flux the joint again while its hot the reheat & the solder will flow & fill any voids.

Now the next step is a tad fiddly, but still pretty easy.

Flip the condenser over and repeat the last step through the holes in your plate.

The third pic in the previous post shows where I filed two little spots of the bur down to allow the discs to be inserted while leaving the bur there as a retainer.

Now your fluxed joint and solder bits are in place heat everything as you did before, use a torch to see through the holes so you can see.

This pic shows a brazing rod for pushing the solder into place against the condenser wall.



Before you solder the tubes in drill the holes for your coolant connections, if you dont do this and your bit is sharp it will fuck your whole day by piercing the inner tubes.



Now solder in your tubes using only a medium to low heat, flux the whole face of the condenser & the tubes where the solder is to go. By fluxing the whole face should you melt anything unwanted a tad it will just flow and hold in the joint.





So now we want to clean things up a bit, cut off the excess pipe lengths & flap disc the ends to remove any dog balls etc.

Next up we can put our 1/4" ring styled easy flange on, this method is understood by most and is discussed in detail elsewhere so I wont bother repeating myself here.



Now we can fit our tubes for the coolant lines, be delicate with the flame here and try to keep it away from the other soldered areas, you just want enough heat to melt the solder so it sticks... dont go overboard, slow n steady please.





Now is the time for leak testing, DO NOT go any further until you know it wont leak, there's nothing worse than having to pull things apart after a job is completed because you find you missed the leak test thinking "she'll be right" that one time out of a hundred you miss this step is the time you "WILL" get that leak "GUARANTEED"

Now you can put your pre made ring or whatever else you choose on the other end, in this case I'm using a reducer to get down to 2" before continuing the build.



All prettied up.

And here it is on it's build, ready for the the 180 over the top and into the product condenser.



So I hope this helps all you budding builders out there eliminate some of the problems that keep popping up.

If you follow this guide keeping your work piece clean as you go, you should be able to get through it reasonably trouble free, however if you fuck it up then ignore all my advise throw your piece in the bin and forget this tutorial ever existed :teasing-neener: :laughing-rolling: :teasing-neener:

Cheers,

Mac.

ps. it actually took me longer to build this tutorial than it did to build the condenser, so you bastards better appreciate it :teasing-blah:

Good job Mac, very helpfull for newbies :handgestures-thumbupleft: . Don't you need hard solder for the ring join?. Mine smashed apart with soft solder. We need more tutorials like this hey, don't even think theres a liebig one here is there?. Not sure if in ment to post general chat here so remove it if not.

Don't you need hard solder for the ring join?

Yes, but I also said

by McStill » 08 Feb 2013 13:16

Next up we can put our 1/4" ring styled easy flange on, this method is understood by most and is discussed in detail elsewhere so I wont bother repeating myself here.

This is brilliant Mac :handgestures-thumbupleft: I'm about to build mine in the next couple of days so your timing is impeccable.

Do you have any tips for the soldering of the flattened 1/4" ring onto the condenser, to avoid melting the soldered plate end (which is on the other side of the pipe at the same point)?

Just solder the easy flange on as you normally would, as long as you have a nice flat surface for it to sit on you'll be fine :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Could do them at the same time? :think:

nice post. This is going to help a hell of alot of people I am sure :handgestures-thumbupleft: cant wait to give mine another try with this method

Brendan wrote:Could do them at the same time? :think:

You could but I dont do it that way, I like to make sure the seal on the disc and housing is sound ;-)

Yeah I understood what you ment, I didn't explain myself properly, I ment I cant do the flanges like that cause I cant afford the equipment for hard soldering, thats all.
Good luck Brendan.

googe wrote:Yeah I understood what you ment, I didn't explain myself properly, I ment I cant do the flanges like that cause I cant afford the equipment for hard soldering, thats all.
Good luck Brendan.

It can be done mate, PM me and I'll explain it... so we can keep this thread on topic ;-)

Sure looks easy when you do it.... :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Excellent tutorial Mac :handgestures-thumbupleft: :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Well written mate, great tutorial :clap: :clap: :clap: :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Just trying to help out, been a few guys asking me lately how I build mine so doing this post should help me to stop answering the same questions over n over.

I'll add more when I build the PC for my new rig, it'll be a bit more for the experienced builder though ;-)

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk 2

Am I the only one impressed by the disks? How the eff do you get them so perfect? I just bought a drill press to chuck up disks and touch up with a grinder( a real red neck lathe :obscene-tolietpush: ) but this has no center hole for the arbor...and an impossibly great fit! Just cut and file?!? FML! That's artwork right there.

I just cut the discs out with a Dremel with cutting disk, then just file them gradually until they pop/hammer lightly in :handgestures-thumbupleft: