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Hey guys, sorry in advance if some of my terminology is off, i'm still learning. I'm trying to to get this new to me stainless steel European reflux condensor safe and ready to use. It's missing a temp guage on the kettle, the fitting where one would go is smooth-tapered to 3/8"ID. I also need one up top on the reflux column and the ID is 3/8" smooth aswell , the column is 1.5" wide. Hoping someone knows where I can find them! I also noticed a few small cracks along where the 90° elbows are welded from factory so to be safe, I'm looking to silver solder the area without buying a big roll of stay brite 8, I'd like to make sure its still a "food grade" solder/flux, the only one I've been able to find in a small amount (1/2 oz) is "Harris SBSKPOP Stay-Brite Silver Bearing Solder Kit" and it says it has 4% silver content. Has anyone used this product before on stainless? Or if you guys have other suggestions on what to use please let me know! Thanks in advance.

You will hear that Google better become your friend. I don't know if I would blame your column on Europeans, but it's a piss poor design. Put it up for sale on your ebay and read about other designs. Most projects I say live learn and grow. Yours will make you pull your hair out and quit.

I am trying to understand what I am looking at. Is the small pipe on the right for cool water passing through, if so that is a very old and not very efficient design. I would think that the cold water in and the hot water out should both be on the same side as the main column. I don’t understand the 3 small pipes, could you give a bit more info?

Honestly, you are just better off selling that and getting a better design of still head.

You'll just end up wasting a load of time and getting frustrated, when you could start off with a decent reflux setup.

I tend to agree with the other advice .
Bad design . Also , if it’s got potential cracks , it’s going to be a nightmare .
Get rid of it . Personally , scrape metal ….. save someone else the problem .

But if you are going to go ahead , firstly , you don’t need a thermometer to do distilling . So you can quickly fix that problem by sticking corks n the the tapered thermowells .

However , if that cross tube on the right of your pic is the extent of the reflux , it will do 9/10s of sweet F all . I’d just treat it as a Pot still .

The cracks in the welds is a major concern . I’d be worried that if they are there now , even if you solder them up , it very likely will keep splitting .

Some better pictures would help. The boiler might be salvageable... is the column modular? There has to be a condenser... hopefully?

Thanks for the replies, starting to agree that the still head is garbage, but I'm hoping that the boiler is salvageable? That's mainly what I was after as a starting point, but wish I seen the cracks on the head before I got it. The guy convinced me that copper mesh packing would make it sufficient but now my doubts are confirmed.. is it worth salvaging the 1.5" x 19" long straight section and/or the condensor? I like the benefits of stainless, but I want to make sure I have enough copper, reflux for equilibrium as I can while keeping the height reasonable. Thinking of adding more horizontal cooling tube's? And/or adding another section/maybe a dephlegmator onto the top of the column and re braze all of it? Or would I be better off with a 2" column? I'm gonna dig deeper on better still head designs.
I appreciate the feedback!

That tube that passes through the column is intended to create reflux. I drew cold water in, hot water out. It doesn't matter which way the water flows.

At the very top of the arch, that's just a port for a thermometer.

Lastly the Liebig Condenser/product condenser. I drew cold water in, hot water out.



Like Yummyrum said, you could just use this as a basic pot still. All you would need to do is supply water to the Liebig Condenser. I don't see any cracks, but anyone who TIG welds should be able to fix that. Just to go any local welding supply store and ask them if they know of anyone who TIG welds small jobs on the side. That's what I did and they hooked me up with a GREAT guy who builds & welds race car chassis professionally and does welding on the side too.

I cannot tell what the gasket on the top of the boiler is made of. Typically people would wrap the gasket in PTFE tape (teflon tape) if it is not made of PTFE/teflon.

As someone said before, that's a very old, obsolete design and for good reason. You have a 2" long little pipe that's expected to create reflux. Now a days people use a reflux condenser or a dephlegmator which allows them to operate at full reflux at higher power than that little tube can do. Most people now a days prefer to use Tri-Clamp connections so that they can easily and quickly remove the column from the boiler instead of a bunch of wing nuts. Tri-Clamp connections also allow people to remove the head from the top of the column. Many even use one to be able to disconnect their product condenser.

I would just set that thing aside, study up on different reflux still types, how they work and how they're operated. VM (vapor management), CCVM (condenser controlled vapor management), LM (liquid management) and CM (cooling management) stills are what's mostly used today.

It’s not too different from my still in the early 1990’ies. The through-pipe is for column cooling and supposed to give you some temperature control by running cold water hard through it - below it you’re supposed to put packing (in those days rachig rings was da sheet, lol) to create some sort of reflux. In my still there were two through pipes but mid-section, not as far up. It’s an old dated design but it worked, there are better designs now obviously.

The hole in the bend is for a thermometer, not really needed as this will only really be a pot still but the product condeser looks alright. And maybe the boiler too.

The cracks are a concern and I doubt any ss stills built in those days were 304 steel, ie I dont think the steel is food grade certified. I’m not sure if this is important for you?

Good luck.

Plug the thermometer holes up with any distilling safe material that you can find.
Fix the cracks, or get them fixed add some copper to the vapour path and then use as a pot still.
Forget about the reflux still side of things.

I'm sure we discussed this at length a while back and most of it was lost when the forum was reset