My First Still build and cleaning run...with questions

Many like to post about a first successful ferment (or first all grain mash), or first still built/bought or first good run of the still. Tell us about all of these great times here.
Pics are VERY welcome, we drool over pretty copper 8)

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Zxlork
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Joined: Sat Feb 06, 2010 2:47 am

My First Still build and cleaning run...with questions

Post by Zxlork »

Well I finally got my set up complete. Ended up with a 15.5 gallon keg, 50 foot of 1/2 inch OD soft copper tubing for my worm condenser and a turkey fryer for a burner. Even did a cleaning run on it running it full boar to try and see how much I could push through it...is doing so ran into some problems and a lot of questions.

When I was running it for whatever reason the distilled water would surge coming out the worm. I have no clue why. Here is a picture of my worm before I put it in the plastic bucket.
Coil.jpg
There are 11-12 coils total in the worm. Each coil is 2.5 inch drop to the next coil below it. I knew people had problems before getting a somewhat uniform downward spiral so that is why I soldered it onto #4 gauge copper wire. Because I did this I am stumped as to why I am getting surging. I do not have any marbles in my keg which I will try next water run. Maybe I'm getting surge boiling in the keg itself? Also I plan on eventually insulating the copper pipe. I did put a 18 gallon metal trash can with a hole big enough in the bottom so i can tighten my Tri clamp. Here is a picture of my keg set up and my whole set up as well.
Keg w-Heat Shield.jpg
Whole Shabang.jpg
The only thing I could think of that would cause surging is if somehow there is solder in the join I had to solder connecting the two soft copper tubing together. however if there was any i also inverted the copper tubing so it would be on the top if any did remain in their. Any suggestions?

Also I did not know if I am running enough heat. When running it on max I am getting 1 pint every 10 minutes so that's 3/4 of a gallon per hour. Sounds a little slow a stripping run but maybe that's just me.

Look forward to hearing from you guys,
Zxlork
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