SBB's Six Inch Column Build

[Saltbush Bill]

Its been 8 years since I first built and ran my old one piece 4 inch plated column / bubbler / flute.
Ive decided its time for an upgrade to a modular 6 incher. Ive been collecting bits and bobs for this build for over 12 months now.
The whole thing started when I found a full length of brand new 6 inch copper tube cheap and bought it. Then I found a large piece of 2mm thick copper plate at the scrap metal yard. From that point on I started looking for and buying most of the other bits needed for the build.
There is no real plan on paper,
The idea is to build it in modular form, there will be 2 x sections with 2 plates each and 1x section with one plate. this will allow it to be run in any configuration from one to five plates. Mostly it will be used with 4, but I wanted to keep my options open experimenting with other amounts of plates.

A few weeks ago I roughed out the plates using a jig saw and then had a mate turn them to size on his lathe.

The plates will be made using 1.5mm holes on a 5mm grid.
The easy way to get this right is to print out a 5mm grid using a printer , then glue that to the plate using something like Aquadhere wood glue.
you can then center punch and drill the holes. Each plate has approximately 520 holes. A total of approximately 2600 holes to be drilled.

Got stuck into that job in my spare time and over the next week finished all 5 plates.

[Swedish Pride]

looks the business lad.
Is it done yet?

[fizzix]

Wow! You builders impress the sh!t out of me.

[Saltbush Bill]

Is it done yet?

Give me a break SP , Ive only just got started.

You builders impress the sh!t out of me.

You should give it a go Fizz , its not that hard, copper is easy to work with and with a bit of improvisation you don't need many tools.
When I started out if you didn't build your own plated column you didnt have one. You couldn't just buy them, or the components, on line or in a shop like you can now. You pretty much had to build everything from scratch.
That went for most decent stills.

[Yummyrum]

Salty , are you going to get your mate to re-spin the plates ? .... or didn’t they spread much ?

How much better was the Dremel compared to the hand drill you used last time ?

[Saltbush Bill]

They did spread a bit Yummy , as they do when you punch them. They are only out by a little bit so I will just spin them in a drill and hit the edge of them with a bit of emery paper or wet and dry.
The Dremel seemed a bit under powered but was lighter, easier and quicker to use. After the first thousand or so holes I was getting better at it. Did the forth plate from start to finish , including gluing in 1hour 44min....That also included de burring the holes by running through a second time from the opposite side.

[pfshine]

Bang up job so far. The time on the plate is amazing. It's sounds pretty awesome, can't wait to see it done.

[Saltbush Bill]

On to making the sight glass mounts, I'll stick to the same method that I used last time for this as it worked well. Sight glasses will be from Still Dragon, The ones on my old still where some of the first sight glasses that they sold, in the 8 years that Ive been using them Ive never had one fail. I would recommend them to anyone thinking of building a plated column. The copper rings used to make the saddles are just what is sold to join pieces of copper pipe in Au. A lot of them are bigger and chunkier....I like this type because they are nice and thin and keep the glass in close to the column.

Templates for the saddles were made by using this, its been around a long time and works well. http://www.harderwoods.com/pipetemplate.php

Templates were glued on then a wrap of clear tape put around them for further strengthening.
There are lots of ways of doing these, I used this to rough out the cut away.

Then tidied up using one of these.

Finished off with emery paper wrapped around the main column for a perfect fit.

[Saltbush Bill]

[Jack C]

SB. Did you finish this project?

[Saltbush Bill]

No it's stalled atm......trying to finish a house renovation and a couple of other projects.
The still has to take a back seat for now.....have done a few small bits when I have an hour or two spare.

[Jack C]

Well hope your able to catch up and complete it. The plan looks well thought out and the tradesmanship is great.

[Saltbush Bill]

Life has still been busy and Ive had little spare time to work on this thing, Luckily a couple of mates turn up who pitched in and made it happen much quicker than it would have if Id done it alone. Without them helping this would more than likely still be a pile of parts on the work bench. Many hands make light work, Thanks Empty and Scotty
Did manage to get a few more photos as the build progressed so will put a few up now.

[Saltbush Bill]

In the time I've been using my old 4 inch column Ive had a few issues with it flooding, this caused me to experiment at times with different downcomer designs. Inefficient downcomers cause flooding and in turn become a bottle neck in plated columns.
Too small of an opening at the mouth of the downcomer is usually the problem imo. For that reason I decided to do something a bit different and make mine a cross between a standard type of downcomer and a weir type. This allows for a larger collection area and lets everything work a lot better. I came up with two different options for this, one was to fabricate a weir like this.

The second option was to use a slice of two inch pipe......something like this.

Both cover roughly the same surface area of the plate.......I ended up going with option 1

View from the bottom

[Saltbush Bill]

[Saltbush Bill]

Bit of a mock up and then time to attach some sight glass mounts.

Was going to run 4 inch sight glasses but didn't like the way it looked , cut back to 3 inch and happy that I did.

[Bushman]

Nice reviewing all your photo’s, you have a lot of patients SBB.

[Saltbush Bill]

Outside looking in

Inside looking out

[Saltbush Bill]

My first build had an old school plate tree, plates in this one are non removable, they are soldered in.

[Saltbush Bill]

The next part of the job was the product condenser, this was made using 5 x 1/2inch tubes 500mm long inside of a piece of two inch.

[Pure Old Possum Piss]

I can hardly wait to see the finished project!
Beautiful work!

[Saltbush Bill]

It was finished a long time ago.....just never got around to putting up the finished photos.
Will try to remember next time I've got it out of its corner of the shed.

[Saltbush Bill]

[Yummyrum]

Jezus , Salty , have you nicked named that thing Donkey …. coz it sure does piss like one

[Saltbush Bill]

Might look a lot Yummy but thats only 4 LPH or 400ml every 6 min.

[Wildcats]

Only 400 ml every 6 minutes he says. Lol. That's like a water fall to me. Great build. Love the copper porn. Great job SBB

[MooseMan]

That's extremely skilled copper work, Bill.

Really enjoyed going through the photos, just wishing I had the time, the materials, and a tenth of your knowledge to build something that lovely.

Moose