Saw a site tube with the SS protector at Brewer's today, $70. It looked nice but kinda thin and short. I think the keg tube will not oly look better because of the size but wiil be more durable also.
I have a rather outlandish idea. Find a nice and thick carbide router bit, the kind used in circuit board shops, and attach it to a router. The kind you would use for woodworking. Then attach the router to a router table. Drill 2 holes, one on each end, the start hole and the end hole. rev up the router and drop the pipe into the start hole. Run it down, slowly, to the end hole. if you made a jig with a few pieces of wood to hold the tube I think it would work great! Maybe this outlandish idea will work. Hope my ideas at least spark an idea somewhere!
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"I feel sorry for people who don't drink. They wake up in the morning and that's as good as they're going to feel all day." -Dean Martin
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Originally Posted by TheFlyingBeer
...no sense hauling empty carboys around when full ones take up just as much space. :)
I thought about using a V-groove carbide router bit but just as I was about to plunge the tube down (held to wood with some EMT hangers), I had a last minute "WTF am I doing".
I loaded an 8" thin cuttoff wheel into my tablesaw and made some test cuts... it's butter. I just have to clamp some stops and run the three tubes.
The hex is formed with a spare compression fitting and a hammer with a little oil for lubrication. It was the easiest part of the project and had four tubes done in 10 minutes.
Brewer's is getting $70 for an inferior version of my sight kits. Wow, I might have to increase my margin a bit.
Once I get the process dialed in, I could make up more for anyone that sends me their tubes and just charge a few bucks for my time.
I'm not there yet but I will probably extend the tube up a little higher than the glass and cut it on a 45 degree angle so the high side is closest to the keg. I'll then drill a small hole through both the tube and the keg's upper skirt. Then I can use a stainless bolt through and just use either nuts or washers to space it perfectly so that the glass is centered. I'll use Orings or grommets to hold the glass centered. More pics coming.
I made up this jig to hold the tubes while I ran them on my tablesaw but the freehand cut one actually came out better. I think it has something to do with wobble in the larger diameter discs. The 4" grinder is rock solid.
The one on the right was cut by hand.
I cut the top at about a 30 degree angle with the high side opposite the slot. I plan to drill a hole in the tube and then tap a hole in the keg for a 1/4-20 bolt. I'll then use washers to make up the gap between the tube and keg.
This project took a lot of time but piece of mind is pretty important to me.
I got some more questions about this DIY so linked to it in my sig and wanted to add some followup details.
I don't really know the inside diameter of these sanke dip tubes, but whatever it is, it is exactly the right size to be formed over a 1/2" compression fitting nut. While I currently like compression elbow fittings for the sight glasses, you'll need a straight version to use as a die to form the end of the tube. Apply some oil to the inside of the tube and outside of the compression nut and pound it in with a hammer. If your fitting is male NPT on the end you're hitting, a pipe cap can be threaded on to protect it. YOU MUST form this hex end before slotting the tube lengthwise.
In the installed position, the bottom of the tube is just pressure fit onto the nut of the sight glass fitting. At the top, it's secured to the keg with a 10/32 machine screw. I tapped the keg skirt so it would thread directly in but you could use a backing nut. I cut a piece of 3/16" ID thick wall beverage tubing as a spacer.
I did this back a few months. I used another similar sized hex that I rounded the corners off a fair bit, for the first form. I alternately tapped the Sankey tube above each flat with a hammer, and smacked the tube down over the hex from the opposite end with a spiral wound leather mallet. When it was close to the correct shape, I then used an actual compression nut that I only slightly removed the hex corners on, to finish the hex shape in the SS tube.
I first made sure of correct tightness for each sight tube for each keg, and marked each tube for that keg. After getting the tubes to sit down to a uniform depth on all three keggles, I assigned each tube to a keggle, for the orientation of the slots for each keggle. I marked each tube for its correct direction outwards, so that the slot would appear correctly aligned, to the clocking of the hex flats for it's associated compression hex nut. I then just used nails driven part way into a wood bench to hold the tube. I put a set of nails on either side of the tube, a 1/4 of the length in from each end, and bent them inwards to hold the tube side to side, and put a nail at each end to keep it form sliding towards or away form me.
I used a heavy duty angle grinder and coarse stone-type wheel to coarse grind the tube to a Sharpie outline I had drawn when it was installed over the glass tube on the keg. When I had most of the stock removed, I then used a 5" air grinder with a 120 grit disk to shape the sides of the slot parallel and to size. I checked the width of the slot with a set of calipers to do the parallelism, but just eyed the straightness of the slot. The ends are formed to shallow out as to make an oval shape start at each end, rather than a square-ish shape as you have shown. A little work with an air die grinder to de-burr and fine finish the shape, and I was done.
I just inserted the next tube into the nails to start coarse grinding it. The SS tubes get VERY hot during grinding, and the removal is poor; it mostly bends under and must be ground away after getting thin, by the 5" disk grinder during the coarse grinding, then continuing with the angle grinder once again.
I cut the tubes to the length required by my placement of the SS eyebolt at the top of the upper skirt. I cut them off square with a thin cutoff (1/16") wheel on a die grinder, and after carefully de-burring everything with a burr knife ( a sharpened 3-corner-file type of deburring tool), and a fine round file.
I also used a set of o-rings from Corny posts to hold tube central to eye bolt, which had the effect of holding the SS tube central to the glass tube. The same o-rings were also used as a sort of compression ferule inside the 1/2"NPTx1/2"tube 90* compression fittings. I did not use the SS ferules that came with the fitting.
I take no credit for any of the concept, it was all Bobby's idea and I also got the glass tubes from Bobby. My contribution to this is my execution of the concept.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by orfy
Never mock another man's brewery.
Quote:
Originally Posted by IrregularPulse
This is HBT of course. Normal Thread that goes every direction but the one intended. This forum should be scientific proof the beer causes ADD
Oh, I have been done with this project for a while but I was getting a bunch of questions about them from folks who hadn't seen the original thread.
Since then I spent a bit of time inquiring about getting these protector tubes mass produced but I have yet to encounter a metal fab or even tubing specialty company to admit to the ability to create a clean slot.
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