Home Distiller

Wow, that's it OD, many thanks.

Will contact then right now.

Joe

olddog wrote:Try this site Joe, http://www.apolloflow.co.uk/sightglasses" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

OD

This is defenatly the way to go with, the Lumiglas® Low-Cost Weld-Neck
http://www.stiflow.com/sglass-lj.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

Thanks for the PM OD.

Heh heh heh... Now we're adding sight glasses? At the hobby level? Too cool!

It just dawned on me that Manu, and for sure others, thinks of these stills as reflux still, but they aren't. There is some natural reflux when you get the power right, but it's not a "toss it all back and re-distill everything" type of reflux, which is akin to holding down the trigger on a machine gun and firing until nothing could survive. Instead, these are true fractioning heads, where a bit of natural reflux does take place, but the power is what determines what goes where, and we can efficiently separate what we want from what we don't want. As long as OldDog doesn't crank the power up high enough to "push" a lower volatile up to his collection plate, it won't be there, and will simply stay within the column, collecting in the lower plates and being re-distilled there, and anything more volatile than he wants shoots past the collection plate(like a cheap bastard sneaking out at church ). The whole trick is to find the power necessary to keep the tails under the collection plate, and the heads above it. Quite efficient if you get it right. With mine, I have to keep the power down low enough to get all the higher volatiles(fores and heads) out of the system(which is why I collect them), and when they're all gone, I can increase the power to get the hearts, but not too high to now "push" the lower volatiles past the uppermost plate.

We don't control these with reflux; we control these by choosing how high up the column(s) we wish to push the various volatile compounds at which time.

As I said before, when forced to think through -why- these things work, I learn more about them myself. Thanks for making me think further; we'll get our finger on the pulse, yet. I can now see that where mine needs some tweaking of the power at various stages for it to work the way I want it to, OldDog's Coffey style head can do it without operator input, once the operator finds exactly the power required to hold the tails below the collection plate, and yet force the heads past it. Exactly what a continuous still would need! Yet in a batch still, it can still work; only we'll have -some- early heads as well as late tails.

Neat!

I'm planning to built OD's still in 5 or 6", that's what the sight glasses are for, it's a project for the near future.

Next week I will get probably the official, commercial permission for my "hobby".

Barney Fife wrote:Heh heh heh... Now we're adding sight glasses? At the hobby level? Too cool!

Neat!

While studying some german pages about continuous, plated stills I found this photo of a single cup plate.

Thought I share this beauty with you folks.

Now you know why I want sight glasses?

Hey OD,
I've been throughly impressed with this design and want to build a twin column still based off this, but modifying it for vodka and gin. Had one question though, The piping that connects column 1 to column 2, what diameter is that?

Thanks

GM

Thats just 1/2"annealed tubing. Since progressing form this design to the Magic Flute, I see in retrospect that a dephlagmater on the second column would have made a big improvement.



OD

olddog wrote:I see in retrospect that a dephlagmater on the second column would have made a big improvement.

That is what i was thinking too! or a boka style condenser. Was gonna attach the condenser via a 2" triclamp fitting so I could sneak a gin bucket in there when I got that martini itch!

After seeing Butt Wheat's pot still variation of this build, I'm curious how well it would work as a potstill. I have a hybrid still design floating in my head, and it would be nice to know how well a setup such as his would work.

his post:
http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 1#p6818961

Question about your down-comers -

I know you did it right and made them lower after the picture was taken, but my question is: how low did you take them? Below the slits, or level with the edge, or inbetween.