Coiling soft copper

Making my wort chiller tomorrow. Was messing around with my copper and couldn't get it to form without kinking. I know someone will have something great for me.

If you have a cornie, use that as a form.

There is a tool out there for forming copper that is essentially a spring that you slip the tubing through so it bends evenly without kinking.

Edit: Google says it is called a spring type tube bender

I wrapped the tubing around a paint can for my immersion chiller.

I used my cornie. If you do this, hold on to one end of the copper and roll the cornie on the copper so it winds the copper on the cornie.

First of all, if it comes in a coil, don't uncoil it. More likely than not you'll be needing a smaller diameter coil than it comes rolled as. Secondly, use a form. Any cylindrical container will work (I used a tupperware container that was close to the size I needed). Drop the whole coil over the container, grab one end and slowly wrap the rest of it around the container doing little sections at a time. It shouldn't take a great amount of pressure.

Careful work has allowed me to do larger radiuses and the spring bender works for smaller radiuses. If you want to get fancy, fill the tubing with water, cap the ends and freeze it. Then bend and form your tubing while the water inside is still frozen. This method will allow you to get some very tight bends.

A lot depends on what size tubing you are using and the radius you want to bend it to. The typical 3/8" OD tubing isn't difficult to bend without kinking it, but anything largeer than that can be challengind. The larger the diameter, the more difficult it will be to bend. A corny keg works pretty well as a form to ben the tubing around. Gentle, firm force works best.

An easy way to coil the copper tubing around the corny is to; lay the corny on the lawn, unspool a little of the copper tubing, place it under the corny, holding one end of the copper tubing roll the corny over the tubing. Easy to keep tight rolls...no kinking of the tubing.

EvilGnome6 said:

First of all, if it comes in a coil, don't uncoil it.

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+1

Too much bending will work harden the copper and it will become brittle.

If you have 50' of copper I'd suggest an ale pail, or something closer to your boil kettle. I used a cornie, and the coil turned out pretty tall. I wish I would have used something with a larger diameter. Even my 10 gallon batches would benefit from a larger diameter coil that had the coils spaced apart better.

If you have 25' then a cornie will do fine, it won't be excessively tall.

my $0.02

Another way is to fill the coil with sand. that will protect the walls from caving in as you bend it. Best way has been mentioned. Use a Corny, and if needed for the turns vertical, get a set of spring benders.

What I used to make mine was a 10" cardboard tube used for pouring concrete footers. They're cheap and it was the perfect size for my pot.

MisterGreen said:

What I used to make mine was a 10" cardboard tube used for pouring concrete footers. They're cheap and it was the perfect size for my pot.

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+10 on the sakrete form tubes. They are great, inexpensive (about $7 at the Depot) and come in different diameters (6, 8, 10, 12in) to fit your kettle. Another little tidbit, drill a little hole in the tube to hold an end of the coil and secure it with duck tape - this is great if you don't have an extra set of hands to help coil the copper.

axr said:

+10 on the sakrete form tubes. They are great, inexpensive (about $7 at the Depot) and come in different diameters (6, 8, 10, 12in) to fit your kettle. Another little tidbit, drill a little hole in the tube to hold an end of the coil and secure it with duck tape - this is great if you don't have an extra set of hands to help coil the copper.

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Yeah, I just cut a little notch out of the end to hold the one end of tubing. Worked like a charm.

Simphoto02 said:

Another way is to fill the coil with sand. that will protect the walls from caving in as you bend it. Best way has been mentioned. Use a Corny, and if needed for the turns vertical, get a set of spring benders.

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+1,000,000 best way period. I do this with copper, AL, and stainless for fuel lines.

TommyBoy said:

+1

Too much bending will work harden the copper and it will become brittle.

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That can be remedied by annealing....See below

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jSz11lz8MA]YouTube - Copper Annealing[/ame]

Sawdustguy said:

That can be remedied by annealing....See below

YouTube - Copper Annealing

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Yes but if someone is not capable of correctly working copper they sure as heck are not going to be proficient in annealing. Annealing 50' or even 25' of copper tubing with a torch would take forever.

TommyBoy said:

Yes but if someone is not capable of correctly working copper they sure as heck are not going to be proficient in annealing. Annealing 50' or even 25' of copper tubing with a torch would take forever.

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I couldn't agree with you more if they had to anneal the whole coil but if there was one spot that was brittle from constant bending and had to be annealed I think it could easily be accomplished with a hand held torch pretty easily.

I am going to have to agree with TommyBoy,if you get a coil of copper and when changing the diameter of the coil you strain harden it to the point that you need annealing your doing it wrong.

Sawdustguy said:

I couldn't agree with you more if they had to anneal the whole coil but if there was one spot that was brittle from constant bending and had to be annealed I think it could easily be accomplished with a hand held torch pretty easily.

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Yeah. It would be funny seeing what the coil would look like when somebody gets to this situation though.

I threw 50' of refrigeration copper tubing in a friends work kiln at the end of the week friday for a deep soak and had it removed early monday morning. With a hole drilled into the end of a block of hardwood "C" clamped onto a big Argon bottle it was easy to wrap the tubing around for a machine made looking coil. It needed four 1/2" x 3/16" copper strips added to the coils full height soldered vertically inside the coils with a spacer added between coils. The 90 degree fittings were added plus the copper lines up and out of the kettle with more copper strips for added support then the whole coil assembly was acid dipped for a bright clean copper finish.

i just used my fermenting bucket as a form to curl 50' of 1/2" copper, i wish i had a cornie keg lying around though because the diameter of the coils barely fits inside of the keggle i'm making.
For all of you out there with a keggle thermometers sticking inside, do i need to worry about the coils of my IC bending the end of the thermometer probe?
Should the IC just rest on top of the probe or should i re-bend it to a smaller diameter and taller size? Thanks! (building my first keggle as we speak)

When you use a 4" long thermometer probe plus deduct the length of the coupling the probe is sticking into the keg only app 2 1/2". This isn't a problem as I cut the top of my keggles at 10" diameter openings so the coils just fit in and still clear the temp probe.

Find an object slightly smalller in diameter and rewrap your coil slightly smaller
in diameter to solve your problem. I like to keep them big as possible to allow for crap in the center during the whirlpooling.