Home Distiller

Hi guys, I'm in the process of building a still similar to this one at Hillbilly stills.



My design will mount to a 16 gallon Bud keg, and initially will use a Worm instead of the inline condenser that's pictured on the Hillbilly Stills sight.

So far we've had some really good luck sourcing the copper, and stainless ferrules & Clamps, and have everything cut ready to assemble; but we ran into some hiccups on doing the welds.
We have torches and an Arc Welder, but no TIG.
My buddy who usually does the welding thought we should just use regular copper& zinc braising rods with the regular torch to weld the 45 which is 2.5 type L, and the down pipe which is 1". That failed! We then tried it with Safety-Silv 56, but then we couldn't get that to work either.

So I asked a few friends who fit copper professionally, and got three different answers.

The only one that was remotely helpful was "use this stuff called Ruby Red". http://www.mcmaster.com/#catalog/119/3380/=n4xydc" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
However I'm not sure how helpful that would be.

So I don't know, I've come to the sages to ask for help and advice.

Don't most people use lead free silver solder and flux on copper? That's what I bought and use.

Yeah, definitely Lead free whatever it is, I'm just having trouble with what lead lead free stuff to use, and what technique specifically to use; because it's not like braising couplings, It needs an actual weld.

I'll b honest that is gonna be pretty hard to reproduce. It is copper porn! If you make it look that good U da man! As good as she looks she can't produce good whisssskkkey. Gotta be a lookin peace not a workn peace. Yea solder please.

Years ago, I was in charge of installing a dental clinic in the basement of an old building. I was part owner and general contractor of all the projects that took place. I hired a plumber that trained my crew to connect all the nitrogen lines with copper phosphorus brazing rods. Not sure why you would want to do it...also not sure of the applications for home distilling...but they worked well for the hundreds of joins my team had to employ. Lead free solder for copper is amazingly strong...that's why most folks use it. If I recall, it takes like 1300degrees F to melt the copper phos...someone on here will probably know much more than me. Good luck to yah~

If you are tryng to solder copper to stainless,it will be quite difficult without specialty rods and fluxes (check out muggy weld SSF-6 in agoogle search) but these are extremely expensive at almost $70 for only two rods.... works out to about $800 per kg of consumable.

Best overall mtehod for SS to copper is Tig, and is economical if you can do yourself or have a buddy with a tig welder in his garage.

Copper to copper you should be able to use lead free silver solder thats avail at any bardware store.

Sometimes large diameter copper is hard to heat up enough using propane torches. The copper radiates away rhe heat too fast sometimes, so unless you can insulate either side of where the connection is, you gotta step it up to MAPP gas. Burns much hotter and you will never go back to using propane even for small diameter stuff ( about 5-10 seconds of heat with a MAPP torch on 1/2 and 3/4 fittings and the solder takes immediately.)

I for one would use silver br. rod for that butt joint. I did one a few years ago in school. I had brought from home a corner clamp to use as a jig to hold my bevel in place. I did not want a vice to suck up all of my heat.
One thing with copper that big you will need oxy-accetelyne.
If you can't do that with the tools you have, you may have to use fittings.
Hope you geterr-done.

Thanks for all of the pointers everyone! I really appreciate the site and everyone in the community. You guys are so good about contributing, and I just can't thank you all enough.

Anyways, I had actually been using a acetylene torch on it, and I think Tater Patch Kid pointed out something that I was overlooking. We were thinking we just weren't getting the metal hot enough, because it would get blue, but not redish'. At the time we thought it was because of the tip we were using on the end of torch. So, I'm thinking that might have had something to do with it, but Tater's comment about the vice reminded me of something. We had it in a very big leg vice; like a 42" leg vice! When we would pull the pieces out of the vice, the vice would be just as hot.

So what color do you guys think the copper should be before we add solder? Should I get kind of red?

I'd rather ruin it and get more than have it going to waste.

Get that copper red, then pull the torch back and see if the rod will melt, It is a matter of heat control. If that was 56% silver it should have a higher melting point.
I have not used that much silver as it is quite expensive. I think plumbers and hvac servicemen only use 5%. The plumber would only be using soft solder.
You talked about the copper only turning blue, sounds like it was not hot enough.
Keep practiceing and don't blow a hole in your pipe, you can realy burn the pipe if you are not carefull

The above build would not be that hard, one cut then butt weld it. Shotgun and you are in business.

Personally I like to TIG everything but most people don't have a TIG or know how to use one. I suppose it all comes down to what you have available.

Tater Patch Kid wrote:If that was 56% silver it should have a higher melting point.
...I think plumbers and hvac servicemen only use 5%. The plumber would only be using soft solder.

56% usually has a lower melting point which is good for brazing copper to stainless steel. The 56% I use melts at 620 - 650°C. It can only be effectively used for capillery filling of joins. If you use 56% with indium in it it has a greater range between solidus and liquidus, 600 - 710°C. This gives it more workability, you can push the fillet puddle along with the flame. I don't know if indium is toxic, but just in case it is, it won't be in my still. The most suitable silver brazing alloy for service with any stainless steel where crevice corrosion is a problem is a silver-copper-indium-nickel alloy.

The phosphorous rods that plumbers use (down here in Oz) isn't soft solder. It is a brazing alloy usually with 2% Ag and a liquidus/solidus range of 645 - 820°C. This gives it much more workability which plumbers need.

The phosphorous rods that plumbers use (down here in Oz) isn't soft solder. It is a brazing alloy usually with 2% Ag and a liquidus/solidus range of 645 - 820°C. This gives it much more workability which plumbers need.

Don't call it brazing, I have been down that path before

You need to be doing it in something that won't draw heat, brick, tile, ect . I doubt plumbers would know to solder these days thanks to.shark joins

johnhopper1957 wrote:

The phosphorous rods that plumbers use (down here in Oz) isn't soft solder. It is a brazing alloy usually with 2% Ag and a liquidus/solidus range of 645 - 820°C. This gives it much more workability which plumbers need.

Don't call it brazing, I have been down that path before

Ahh, the rods are an alloy with Ag, Cu, P in them, so technically no brass content. We'd need some zinc and tin to call it "brazing".
Trouble is, there's no lead, so can we call it soldering?
Thanks for the correction.

Cardinalbags wrote:If you are tryng to solder copper to stainless,it will be quite difficult without specialty rods and fluxes (check out muggy weld SSF-6 in agoogle search) but these are extremely expensive at almost $70 for only two rods.... works out to about $800 per kg of consumable.

Best overall mtehod for SS to copper is Tig, and is economical if you can do yourself or have a buddy with a tig welder in his garage.

That's not true. Soft soldering SS ferrules to copper is pretty straight forward. All it requires is a water soluble acid flux. Just sand the hell out of the SS and make sure not to touch it.

Brazing you can use any filler, to be defined as brazing it needs to be over xxx Celsius, under xxx Celsius it is classified as "soldering"

OK, if anyone is interested, here is an update. Cardinalbags & Tater Patch Kid was F-N-A right. That 42" leg vice that I love so much was killing our project. I moved everything out of the leg vice and made a jig out of loose bricks. I then began doing the metal work myself.

As soon as I figured out it needed be out of the leg-vise, it was no-problem to get that copper good and orange/red. After I moved it to the brick jig, I dropped some copper phos. rods on it to tack it, & VIOLA! The column is as stiff as a man's neck with a viagra pill stuck in his throat.

So now What? I used Copper Phosphate rods to tack the copper-to-copper connections, and they seem to be STRONG. After I get the corner piece finished, I plan on welding the downward pipe going to the condenser.

So then when that is done, I'll weld my custom copper cap, and then begin phase III. At which point I will manufacture the a custom copper washer to connect the column to this kick ass 2" stainless ferrell. For that, I plan on using the Safety-Silv 56. The best thing about the ferrell is that it is exactly what you need to mount straight to the keg with a Tri-Clamp, and I have gotten several of them for free because a friend stopped running a huge dairy operation to switch to beef cattle. Additionally, each ferrell comes with a high heat, high volume, food-grade gasket. BONUS! It seems as if Dionysus himself is smiling upon us.

So then, I plan connecting to the flake stand. Here I have two choices. I can either use a my regular wort chiller or counter-flow wort wort chiller inside the garden hose. I haven't decided yet so all input would be appreciated.
Thanks for reading all of these posts. I am really sorry, but I tried pretty hard to get them all into one post, but perhaps I am dumber than the VCR.