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.

parts 1.jpg

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.

plate copper.jpg

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.

plate 001.jpg

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

plate 002.jpg

drill plates.jpg

plate in column.jpg