Firstly my big pot still mkIII for strip runs and such that fits on my 50L keg (not the one its leaning on the photo). It started out with a stainless bowl attatchment to my keg and a pvc cooling jacket. I found the stainless bowl to be flimsy and the areas around where I soldered became sensitised from the oxy heat and therefore rusted through very quickly. The pvc jacket never really worked either. This is it now.
The keg-head attachment is the same type that I used for my reflux that I have posted before. It is just a flattend out bit of 3" copper pipe, beaten and cut into shape. It has proven to be a very simple and reliable connection to my keg which is then sealed with flour paste. The coolant intake and outake are 3/8" copper with brass fittings to go to ordinary hose fittings. The other end is just soldered into a drilled hole in the jacket which I then filed level with the inside of the pipe. The cooling jacket is made from slightly larger diameter copper pipe, which I bent in at the ends slowly with a pair of small nosed pliers to match the smaller pipe's diameter and soldered so no messing around with reducers.
Next is a smaller still for making infused alcohol, oils and essences.
The boiler is about 10L and is chrome plated copper that was scrapped from a very early still of mine. The head is just a scaled down version of the bigger one above with a few differences. The boiler-head conection was made from flattened out copper which was then gently beaten over the boiler to form the lip on it. The head now snap fits onto the boiler, which I then seal with very small ammounts of flour paste. As it was intended for essences, I have soldered 4 small hooks onto the inside of the lid, so I can suspend a basket filled with herbs. I just intend to buy a flour sieve and just use the SS mesh from it as the basket. The intake/outake fitting are a little different from its bigger brother. It still uses 3/8" pipe soldered to the jacket but I fitted a male-male hose fitting to the 3/8" by the clear plastic hose you buy off rolls at hardware stores and some hose clamps. The pipe-lid connection is a little messy but hey, its airtight and its very difficult to stop the thin copper lid from warping when soldering that large an area. For me, as long as it works, its fine by me.
This is just an adjustable height stand for holding the front end of both the stills. Just some rusty old bits of scrap I welded togeather. The loose top bit is secured at desired height by a screw that fits in a hole in the fixed section that I tapped.
I'm planning to get into grain spirits so this keg I cut open for the purpose of mashing. I also made a big spoon from copper pipe, with flattened pipe end. Please dont make fun of the messy attatchment. I ran out of silver solder so resorted to fluxless brazing rod. Just a note, all the heat from the welding annealed the copper, so I had to bend it around a bit to cold work it back to a satisfactory hardness.
I also cut open two more kegs with only small openings for use as fermenters which I do not have images of.
Anyway, just thought I'd share with you all what I've been up to, hope it was interesting.