quartz as anti bumpers?

[Fiddleford]

sometimes my still makes more noise then a tap dancer in a fiddle contest so i wanna reduce that with anti bumping device's.. i know they do this in labs so the glasswear doesn't break and ive heard of people useing marbles but i wanna try useing quartz for its ability to transfer thermal energy easily and im woundering if it would be safe? i under stand that clear quartz is compossed of silicone and oxygen but im not to much of a wiz on chemical reactions, I'm leaning more twards this then marbles because its less expensive then marbles where i am also what other minerals would i use in the pot for anti bumping? im in a area where crystals are very abundant

[hefezelle]

Add something into the boiler that will sink to the bottom and offer large and rough surface. You want to minimize superheating. Heat conductivity isn't important here. Marbles will work, even better if they have a rough surface, so you could sand them for instance. Quartz crystals would work even better i guess, though cleaning them might get difficult.

Both glass and quartz are quite inert, so they won't react with almost anything you're likely to pour into your boiler.

[Saltbush Bill]

Can you explain this bumping a little more ........is it the boiler making the noise ? the still ? or the condenser ?
Its not a problem Ive heard of before.

[pfshine]

If you put anything in the boiler (aka boiling chips) it's going to make a LOT more noise. People use lots of things, marbles, stones, glass chips, copper cut offs and many other things.

Edit to add: silicon not silicone, big difference.

[still_stirrin]

Why not use small off cut pieces of copper tubing as “boiling chips”?

It benefits two ways: first, you get nucleation points for the boil to initiate, reducing the big “bump, bump, bump” as it begins; and second, you add some sulfur-reducing copper to the process. It’ll help take “the stink” out of your product.
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