Keg Modification NO WELDING - Bottom Drain and Swiveling Casters

[Salt Must Flow]

Some of this may not be new, but I just wanted to give some examples of keg modifications that do not require welding. I like to have swiveling casters and a bottom drain on all of my boilers and other kegs that I use for different uses. I ordered stainless steel coupling nuts 5/8-11 1-1/8" long and 4" swiveling stem casters (5/8-11 threads). I will be using these kegs that I'm modifying here simply to collect Low Wines and use the bottom drain to dump the Low Wines back into the boiler for a final Spirit Run. I do not expect these solder joints to ever break under this type of use and if it did, it wouldn't be catastrophic. Personally I'd feel MUCH better if these Coupling Nuts were TIG welded to the keg if I were using it as a boiler with a tall column. To me it just makes sense for safety reasons because I've never relied on a soldered connection for something this important.

I marked the 4 locations on the keg where I wanted to install the casters. Thoroughly abrade each area and de-grease them.

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Thoroughly abrade the surface on each of the nut couplings and de-grease them.

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I used a relatively large nut I found that was 1/2" tall to use as a spacer.

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Flux well. I used Harris Stay-Clean Soldering Flux and Silver Solder. I heated the nut and the surrounding area using a propane torch, fluxed, continued heating and soldered the nut into place. In most cases the nut solders very well and no more work needed unless there's a blob of solder on the bottom that needs ground away. In this instance the solder joint didn't look great so I flipped the keg on it's side and heated the solder up again.

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I flipped the keg over, heated the nut, the solder flowed and the joint looked MUCH better. Like I said, in most cases I didn't need to do this and this was the ugliest one of of them all.

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