DIY Bottling wand?

Sorry if this has been covered, couldn't find it in a search.

I've got a couple feet of copper pipe left over from making my new immersion chiller. Already used some of the extra to make a new racking cane (damn plastic ones keep breaking) and I'll use a bit for a dip tube once my new kettle arrives, but I'll still have some left over, and at the moment I'm lacking a bottling wand and can't think of another good use for the pipe. Anyone know of a good way to throw a gravity valve or similar on there and make myself a nice metal bottling wand instead of buying another shoddy plastic one?

Dude, they're $2.75. Is it even worth the time to try and rig something?

Eh, it's more fun for me to put something together than just go buy it, and I don't want to waste any of the copper since it was pretty expensive to pick up. Got a better idea?

Just so you know, generally you want to avoid contact with copper after fermentation. During ferm the yeast will scrub out any dissolved copper but afterwords not so much. Admittadly you are talking about a very short duration of contact in a racking cane or bottling wand but...

ReverendTap said:

Eh, it's more fun for me to put something together than just go buy it

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I couldn't agree with you more, however some things are just too inexpensive and hard to improve upon.

camiller said:

Just so you know, generally you want to avoid contact with copper after fermentation. During ferm the yeast will scrub out any dissolved copper but afterwords not so much. Admittadly you are talking about a very short duration of contact in a racking cane or bottling wand but...

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This was not something I was aware of. After seeing old copper fermenters I just assumed it was harmless. Good to know.

Okay, so, scratch the bottling wand. I've got about three and a half feet of leftover 3/8" copper, would turning that into a pre-chiller for my IC have any noticeable effect, or is that short enough I should just leave it in storage until a more legit use presents itself?

3.5' is too short for a pre-chiller. I made a really tiny one that took 10' of 3/8" The 10" got me 10 - 4" diameter coils. The coil stack is 6" high and the vertical standpipes are 12" high. The 3.5' you have would cover the standpipes but not much else.

Tried to think of a use for 3.5' but I got nuthin. . .make tin whistles?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_whistle

ReverendTap said:

Eh, it's more fun for me to put something together than just go buy it, and I don't want to waste any of the copper since it was pretty expensive to pick up. Got a better idea?

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I understand DIY is fun. But as far as not wanting to waste any of it. IMO, using it for a bottling wand would be just that. You're using it for an impractical solution to a problem there is a better and cheaper solution for. So, IMO, that's wasting copper when cheaper plastic could be use more ideally.

I'd just leave it in storage. You never know when a small piece would be usefull. IE, I just went out last week and bought a 2ft peice for a thermowell for my HLT.

Fair enough, into storage it goes.

So, 10 years on since this initial post, who would have guessed there would be an almost global lockdown due to an invisible enemy .. here is South Africa we have an alcohol prohibition .. so everybody with a bit of creativity went out and depeleted the shelves of brewing equipment, including bottling wands, effecting me .. so I went on a search for a diy bottling filler - and found this:
https://www.instructables.com/id/Bottle-Filler-Wand/
Hope this helps.