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Hi all, I'm building a short 3 plate column for rum and flavoured stuff. My idea is to have a 3 plate column in a short section, that I can clamp on and off with ease and be compact, with all innards in one piece, plates, deflag, lyme arm. I have a 3 plate ATM but it's all modular and I just want something clean and easy, I'm sick of clamps. This one will have 2 clamps as it is, one for the column base to riser off the boiler, and one for the pc. I will add pics as I go, hopefully some short tutorials for newbies, depends how lazy I am lol.
500mm long, 3 single bubble cap plates, 2" caps, 1.5" risers, 1/2 downcomers with 3/4" traps. Deflag will be 80~100 with 3/4" inner tubes, amount undecided yet. 2" lyme arm, sort of old school style out the side of the column. Shotty for PC. Have cut the 4", cut the plates and deflag plates, risers, caps and downcomers. Will do the top plate tomorrow for show and tell lol.

Subscribed, thanks

Looks like fun, I'll be watching.

Are 1/2 downcommers big enough ?
I am planning a 4 inch and was lead to believe that 1/2 was too small.
3/4 is the was I'm going.
Maybe 3/4 to 1/2 redicers on the top could help ??
Please let me know as if I can run 1/2 I will have move active plate area.

1/2" will flood at the start when trying to load the plates, I've found that 1/2" works well with my still though, 3/4" was kind of to much, the plates where not as full. Everyone likes there plates different ways though, 3/4" is the standard everyone sticks with so maybe you should if it's your first time?. I used 3/4"~1/2" reducers on my first plates and they worked well, small flooding every now and then while loading but ran well.

I like the size and thought behind this a lot.

Thanks Dad, I'm hoping people can use this idea for a small plated still that's easy to make and produces some fine stuff. My other one is pretty much the same but modular and it produces beautiful rum and is so.simple to run.
Did some plates, I use tube and cut it and flatten it. I'll let the pictures talk.

I've changed the deflag inner tubes to 1" now, always wanted to try it.

Love the step-by-step, keep it coming!

Thanks.mate, sorry the pics are arse about, forgot it did that when adding pics . Got half the deflag soldered up today, next fun is soldering it into the column
I've changed the deflag inner tubes from 3/4" to 1", always wanted to try it, less stuffing around to.

Nice soldering Googe. Its always good to see someone with pride in their work

Thanks empty, I don't have much pride lol, just love doing it and trying to help others.

Deflag soldered in, 4 attemps later due to pin hole leaks having a cold rum to celebrate now!. Next is the first plate

Lyme arm hole cut, test fit

Googe---

Is there a reason you chose bubble caps over sieve or valve plates?

Ease of build, I'd go mental drilling that many holes! Lol.

Googe---

How thick are your plates? I'm new at this and it never occurred to me to use shears to cut my plates. on Dans flute build his plates were 1/8 inch thick. I can't imagine he used shears on those. Your cut looks absolutely perfect I have a feeling if I did it my plates would either not fit in the column or would be sloppy loose.

Any tricks to your perfect cut? If not ill just keep buying my plates.

There about 1.2mm, 3/64 I think John, not exactly sure as it's just scrap tube I had laying around. Thanks for the kind words . I don't really have any tricks, just cut slow, and anneal the plate if you can, makes life easier. File fit will help alot, if you make.them to.small you can hammer them a bit to expand them. Plates are pretty cheap to buy so I understand why you would, I'm tight and love building stuff.

Put 2 plates in, was a but of a struggle cause the caps kept de soldering, so I clamped them.on. Third plate was just clamped into the bottom.section for now, have to put the sight glass in yet, just wanted to try it before I dodo. Ran with 4 plates, worked well, was happy with how it ran except for a but of flooding before.the plates loaded. Got about 92% out of it, no equalizing, just loaded the plates and ran it.

Googe I am a plate still idiot. Without clamps, how did you seat the plates? Does it have a threaded rod up the middle?

There soldered in place humbledore.

Any chance there are more pics on that part of the build?

hey mate, I'm not sure what info you want to know about exactly?, the process?, I didn't take pictures of that sort of thing. I heated from the outside, soldered from.the inside, 9 times out of ten a plate being soldered inside, especially large tube, the tube plate will fall out due to the outside pipe expanding with heat. I don't know what others do, I tap around the edge of the plate with the corner of a hammer head, making small dents, just enough to round the edge a little but not to much so it's to hard to get the plate in. I use a slide square and set the measurement to where I want the plate, then tap the plate down with the handle of a hammer till it's square. It's tricky soldering them in at first but with practice it's pretty easy. I tend to do a quick.solder covering the join, let it cool right done, then check for leaks then go.over the join again focusing on the leak spots, works great. 4" retains a lot of heat and if your not careful you will get everything to hot, pays to get it hot enough that the solder starts melting then back off the heat, wait a while then go again. Hope that helps, I'm hopeless at explaining stuff lol.

Don't know if you do this trick or not. When I have to solder close to an existing joint or seam I lay a wet rag on that joint and it won't melt. Makes it harder to heat up the new spot but it beats the heck out of everything else coming unglued!

Thanks.mate, yep know that trick.

Finally got it finished, only needed a glass, I'm so.lazy lol.

googe wrote:hey mate, I'm not sure what info you want to know about exactly?, the process?, I didn't take pictures of that sort of thing. I heated from the outside, soldered from.the inside, 9 times out of ten a plate being soldered inside, especially large tube, the tube plate will fall out due to the outside pipe expanding with heat. I don't know what others do, I tap around the edge of the plate with the corner of a hammer head, making small dents, just enough to round the edge a little but not to much so it's to hard to get the plate in. I use a slide square and set the measurement to where I want the plate, then tap the plate down with the handle of a hammer till it's square. It's tricky soldering them in at first but with practice it's pretty easy. I tend to do a quick.solder covering the join, let it cool right done, then check for leaks then go.over the join again focusing on the leak spots, works great. 4" retains a lot of heat and if your not careful you will get everything to hot, pays to get it hot enough that the solder starts melting then back off the heat, wait a while then go again. Hope that helps, I'm hopeless at explaining stuff lol.

Hi googe. Nice work and great info on soldering it together. Thanks for sharing.

Did you do all the soldering with soft solder?

Beautiful work, Im a long way away from going away from my pot still but Im trying to learn as much as I can about LM, VM, CM, and Flutes so that when that day comes I will know what I want to build. I love how small this design is as I am limited in my stillin space and a <7 ft tall rig will not be a possibility. My question is are you running this without packing or does the smaller section of column (appears to be 2") contain your packing material?

Thanks hobby, yeah all soft soldered. I had issues though, with the caps desoldering when I was soldering in the plates, if I'd hard soldered them it would have been fine, me and hard soldering don't mix though, for some reason lol. I ended up making tinny bits of angle to bolt the caps down, worked well.
Thanks rod, this is solely a rum still, I make alot. You could just not put the deflag in there and leave to top open for a packed section to clamp on, like my other bubbler, it's all.module. The 2" on the bottom is purely for getting the takoff point higher. packing is best above plates, not under. I do 3 plates and a.packed section and makes a good neutral type drink. It is great how small it is!.

Thanks rock