4th Triangle Flute Design & Build

[Yummyrum]

Superb job Detriot .....always cool to see a well photographed build.

Love the hole pattern .

[bentstick]

Very Nice work you have going on Detroit (from a born Down River Rat) Now reside 4.5 hrs north,Plans and dedication will get you where you want to be! Keep up the craftmanship doing great.

[DetroitDIY]

Quick question regarding the sieve plates. I've been soldering them in place, and soldered one with a 1/8" tilt across the 4" diameter. That's an angle of ~1.75 degrees (slope of 1/32). Does anyone know whether this slope will cause an issue or not?

[acfixer69]

In theory of course it will. The vapor will travel the pass of least resistance. If you got a shallow liquid level is will be more then if a deep plate. The extra flow through the high side may cause splashing to the plate above which is another problem. I would fix it but you can try it and decide yourself.

AC

[hellbilly007]

Awesome work, Detroit. Your attention to design and details is admirable.

I used to be a Flint-stone, but now live in the Bluegrass state.

[dan]

DetroitDIY,

Awesome job! You are going to find it hard to clean your final product condenser tubes with the 90's in the way. I finally went with a 4" to 2" stainless reducer and a 2" 180 to make my life easier. It is super nice to be able to break your column down into small components for cleaning. Just an FYI, the temp above and below the dephlegmator is overkill, looks cool but the thermo-wells get in the way of cleaning. I would just put one at the top and call it good. Looks like you are enjoying it.

-Dan

[guittarmaster]

wow....

that looks incredible!!!

[Yummyrum]

Quick question regarding the sieve plates. I've been soldering them in place, and soldered one with a 1/8" tilt across the 4" diameter. That's an angle of ~1.75 degrees (slope of 1/32). Does anyone know whether this slope will cause an issue or not?

Did you sort this out ?
I know one guy on another forum said his wouldn't run right unless it was level .

[Saltbush Bill]

Thats a great looking build Detroit.

You are going to find it hard to clean your final product condenser tubes with the 90's in the way. I finally went with a 4" to 2" stainless reducer and a 2" 180 to make my life easier. It is super nice to be able to break your column down into small components for cleaning.

Cleaning is NOT an issue, a bubbler needs nothing more than a rinse out with fresh clean water after each run.

[DetroitDIY]

Hey gang. Seems I’ve been so MIA for quite some time. Had some travel, and then had a big woodworking project that side tracked me. Still a few things competing for my time at the moment, but I’m anxious to get back to completing this flute.

Acfixer69, Dan, and Yummyrum. Yes, I fixed the out of level condition. I shouldn’t have even asked, kinda knew it needed to be corrected. I was just disappointed and worried it would be a pain in the keister. Turned out to be rather easy, but I’ll get to that in a bit.

Regarding the cleaning Dan, I read the homedistiller site like a fiend for a while as I planned, but didn’t retain everything. I certainly know about initial cleaning runs (and did them for the pot still I made last summer), but I’m not sure how frequently cleaning is recommended once in use, and do you recommend cleaning the condensers mechanically (brush on a rod kind of thing) or chemically (vinegar/citric acid kind of thing)? I never cleaned my pot still other than rinsing it out (albeit I only ran it like 10 times). Thanks for the tips. It’s not too late yet for me to include a tri-clamp above the product condenser, but it’s getting close to too late.
So… for my progress in between distractions…

First, I found that after taking the cupping effect out of my plates with some gentile hammer peening, and filing all the drill burs flat, I had to do a quick pass of the drill into each of the perforations on my plates as they had become clogged with junk, much of which was bent copper debris. You can see the before and after in the first image. Next, taking a cue from another design (I think it was you Dan), I cut the downcomers at ~45s on my scroll saw, leaving a crescent at the top to net against the cups, which I then cleaned up on the disk sander. The last image shows my plate, downcomer, cup kits ready for soldering. And yes, the chamfer on the downcomer stays comfortably below the top lip of the cup to prevent any gas bypass once filled.

[DetroitDIY]

Next is the soldering. I used a pair of crow bars and gravity to let the downcomer set in the correct position with respect to the cup. In the first picture below you can see two cups, one is not soldered, but just in place to keep the downcomer level with the cup that I am soldering. There is a decent view of the results in my next photo. In the third photo, I’ve fit the top of the downcomer into the proper hole in the perf plate. Got the fit just right by using a deburring tool on the hole in the perf plate until I could JUST fit the downcomer into it with a little effort. I’m using a couple of thick copper shims to support the plate such that the very top of the downcomer will extend 1/8” above the plate (down in this image). This little bit will receive a ¾” copper coupling to allow for an adjustable height on how high the downcomers project above the plates (another lovely, stolen idea… thanks to you smart folks out there). Soldered result is shown next. I will say that this one is a good image, but I had a couple where I put too much heat on the perf plate and distorted or completely melted away the little solder plug in the center of the perf plate that is closing out the oversized drill hole from the machining of the plates. And after a bit of fussing, all the plate sub-assemblies were complete. You can see how I’ve laid them out in the last image, sorting which way they’ll go into the columns to allow me to stack them in any combination to achieve 1-6 plates in my working column.

[DetroitDIY]

Following that, I’m permanently fixing the plate sub-assemblies into the columns. First I wrapped some solder around the OD of my column to get a good fit, then cut the loop so I could tighten it to fit on the ID and placed it on the bottom of the perf plates. The next image shows the plate assembly fit into the column with the solder ring on it. Everything is upside down at this point. The position (depth and level) of the plate has been set by carefully cut wooden blocks. Heat is applied to the outside of the column until the inner ring of solder flows into the plate to column seam. I had more ugly solder drips inside the column… which I cleaned with a lathe gouge and a round sanding bit with an extension on my drill. It took a bit of time and effort, but I was able to clean it nicely.

[DetroitDIY]

A couple photos for fun… our adventure chicken in the shop to check out what I’m up to.

[DetroitDIY]

OK, switching gears to building the dephleg. Having cut out the dephleg plates already, I taped the two (thicker) condenser plates and the thinner, inner baffle plates all together with a template on top so that when I drilled the holes, they were all well aligned for parallel tubes. It’s important to mark the edges of the plate stack here before you unwrap the stack so that you can re-align them in exactly the same rotational relationship. Everything looks symmetrical, but little variations cause them not to be, and the coolant tubes would not go in if they’re all a bit mis-aligned. I started with a controlled centering pilot hole, with the bit projecting much farther out of the drill press than I need to, had some success and picked up speed… which lead to a broken bit. After completing al the center holes, I unwrapped the stack. I had the clever idea of boring into the thicker end plates only part way for the vapor tube ODs, and then drilling a through hole inside of that to match the ID of the vapor tubes. I later just made these through holes for the OD of the vapor pipes as I couldn’t get things to fit together otherwise. If you’re working to proper machining tolerances, you should be able to do this (which would result in a cleaner appearance on the dephleg and a lot of solder surface), but I wasn’t that accurate apparently. The thinner baffle plates were drilled separately. All the plates (I made too many baffle plates) are shown in the last image.

[DetroitDIY]

For soldering the dephleg the first trick was to fit everything together. My dephleg design has 19 vapor pipes, which I’ve cu to length and marked the quarters in the first image below so that I know where I want the 3 cross flow cooling baffles to be placed. In the next image, I’ve fit all the tubes through the 3 baffles. Notice that I cut ne chord on each of the baffle plates at different positions around the dephleg to promote a serpentine flow of the cooling water in the condenser. This redirects the coolant flow 3 times as it flows across the tubes. I calculated the amount of chord to cut off to equal the cross sectional area of the coolant I/O ID. In these last two images I’ve modified the thicker end plates to be through holes, and over sized some as needed to get things to fit. This was a real finesse step to get everything together.

[DetroitDIY]

In this last set of photos I’ve soldered everything together. For the few poor fitting end plate hoes, I had to solder the crap out of things, and let things get just the right level of not too hot where I could just melt the solder and still push it over/into the larger gaps without it all falling through. A few sloppy solder runs through to the 3 baffles in the middle was plenty to hold them in place.

That’s my status to date. I won’t be making more progress for at least a few weeks. Thought I would end with one last photo of some spiced rum I’ve been sipping as I type all this. This is from my first experiments on the pot still, aged in a former bourbon barrel for a good 9 months, and then a bit of cinnamon, cloves, and raisins for a few days. It’s decent, but I’m looking forward to better.

Thanks everyone.

[APD]

That is some serious copper-porn!

Well done sir !!!

[BloodMoses]

Nice work - fellow southeast Michigander here who has outgrew his pot still and debating taking on a flute project. These pictures are motivating.

[thecroweater]

I don't want to tell ya how to suck eggs but it songs look like you will have much violent volume in that RC for the amount of hot vapour. I suspect you are going to struggle to get a good knock down without hammering the water through.

[DetroitDIY]

Thanks Croweater. I'm not into egg sucking yet, but who knows what the future may hold. Thinking about it, I fear you may be right that I'm allowing so much vapor flow path that the coolant flow may not be able to knock it all down. I've been running my older pot still on a 1/6 hp sump pump that flows 17 gal/min with no pressure drop, any my dephleg design will create a reasonable amount of resistance. Any more advice from the fluid dynamics experts out there would be appreciated.

What I'm thinking is that if there's too much vapor to coolant flow, I could go back and seal off some of the vapor paths (at the top side to avoid trapping condensate) until the vapor flow is constricted enough that the water can knock it down OK. Of course, it would be nice to design it right the first time. In order to keep access to the top of the dephleg so I can close tubes off retroactively, I'll need to adjust my design to something like Dan was suggesting before, though he was suggesting it for cleaning.

This brings me to another question I've been meaning to ask of you Dan (and others)... I'll certainly make my cleaning runs of new still after fabrication, but what are the benefits of cleaning runs once a still is put into operation? And is it important to have room for pipe cleaners and bottle brushes to get in there? To get in everywhere, or just a good amount of places? I never cleaned my old pot still, but I didn't run it more than 10 times. If there are other threads that cover this (I'm guessing so), feel to redirect me (I looked some but never found what I was looking for).

Thanks,
DetroitDIY

[thecroweater]

I clean plates when changing from multiple runs of one produce to something completely different . Say a heap of fruit brandy to a whiskey as the fruit tends to put some whitish coating on the plates that may or may not be a problem, I've never cleaned condensers beyond a quick steam run and its been a very long time since I did that. Only did it once to clean off rum gunk build up, ya just don't seem to get a lot of contamination build up in the condensers

[Sailor]

This is a great build thread. Thank you for your level of detail. Once I get my hands on some 4” I’m starting! I believe I’m going to use your 1-2-3 tower stack and have a packed section as another option.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[DetroitDIY]

Thanks Sailor. I've been on a rather long hiatus from this build. Too much of the rest of life on my plate. Which has included fermenting some 20 gallons of cider and 25 gallons of mead… enough to keep me smiling until this flute is operational. And I’m still working through a decent amount of rum that came off my pot still (that still is too slow for me these days).

You mentioned needing some 4” Cu. I have a good length of it (about 5’) on hand that I’m not using in this build. If there were a decent way, I would be happy to sell it to another in need.

Take care,
DetroitDIY

[DetroitDIY]

Quick question for the veterans (or not) out there. I have a stainless tri-clamp fitting that I've been trying to sweat to a 2" Cu elbow. I've added a 2" Cu pipe cut off inside the end of the elbow, and the ferrule sleeve is tucked inside of that... the ferrule to pipe fitting is not tight. I've done this a few times in the past, but this one's giving me fits. There is a sneak path leak that is dripping about 1 drop water / 58 seconds with 6" head on it.

The question is, is that leak rate OK? Or do I need to get in there and try to clean it up (again)? Or is re-work silly and I should just smudge some flour paste on it? Thanks in advance for the advice.

DetroitDIY

[The Baker]

Hi, Detroit,

Sure, flour paste or, less messy, wrap it with plumber's tape, it's kosher for distilling.

Geoff

[acfixer69]

Quick question for the veterans (or not) out there. I have a stainless tri-clamp fitting that I've been trying to sweat to a 2" Cu elbow. I've added a 2" Cu pipe cut off inside the end of the elbow, and the ferrule sleeve is tucked inside of that... the ferrule to pipe fitting is not tight. I've done this a few times in the past, but this one's giving me fits. There is a sneak path leak that is dripping about 1 drop water / 58 seconds with 6" head on it.

The question is, is that leak rate OK? Or do I need to get in there and try to clean it up (again)? Or is re-work silly and I should just smudge some flour paste on it? Thanks in advance for the advice.

DetroitDIY

With flamage vapor there is no acceptable leak. post a question in a thread and I'll bet you will get help

AC

[thecroweater]

Some guys will say flour paste is the cure all, I found if its in joints where it can't bake before vapours hits it it will wash out and leak through. I'm with AC on this, find the problem and sort it

[The Baker]

Some guys will say flour paste is the cure all, I found if its in joints where it can't bake before vapours hits it it will wash out and leak through. I'm with AC on this, find the problem and sort it

If you use a light DOUGH that won't happen.

Geoff

[emptyglass]

@detriotDIY

Your doing good things here brother. You've come this far, dont let a little mechanical challenge hold you up. No leaks...period.

You may be over engineering your condenser, but that beats under engineering. You'll have plenty of head room. It may end up a lil twitchy, but nothing a good needle valve wont cure.

I like your plates. Think you'll do good with this.

Keep up the good work.

In the cleaning runs, keep your work clean as you go. Rinse your work immediately with a good alkaline detergent, like laundry soap. Clean what you can mechanically. This will reduce the work any cleaning runs need...and can mean they are just cursory

A clean still is a happy still.

After that, you copper still acts like a seasoned hotplate. You only need to clean it when it gets horrid.

[DetroitDIY]

Thanks Empty, and the rest of you encouraging me to do it right. I'll sort it out, perhaps next weekend when the extended family is no longer here for turkey, pies, and a taste of homemade beverages.

I've sorted a trick for the reflux shotgun. I built it with 19 1/2" tubes for product and as was pointed out, it'll take a lot of cooling power to knock that down. So I've soldered up 5 little funnel cones which I've added onto 5 of the 19 tubes at the inlet (bottom). This way, they'll let in very little vapor, effectively constricting my shotgun down to 14 tubes. But the cones are not closed at the lowest tip, just very constricted (think 1/2" tube constricted to 1-2 mm tube). This way any product that condenses in them can still drain back onto the plates below. And if I find my cooling capability is excessive, I can just knock off a couple of these cones to allow more area for the vapor to flow. I have pictures, but will have to post them another day.

I also ran into a slight hiccup with some creative, artistic work I wanted to do on the still. The community tech shop just declared Chapter 7, so some of the tools I wanted to use (laser etching my sight glasses for one), are no longer available to me. But I've sorted out a work around for another big element of the design I've had in the works. Hope to have my first examples available to share in a couple of weeks.

Have a good Thanksgiving to those of you in the States.

DetroitDIY