7 Gallon SS Conical - Do these welds look sanitary?

I have seen some posts about the 7 gallon ss conicals that are being sold on ebay for about 225. I bought one because i was going to buy a hopper and weld it myself.... and well... quite frankly it was going to cost about the same.

here is the conical as it stands


The Valves





The Lid and latch

Do these welds look sanitary? should they be ground down? if so, how? I have a dremel, and hand full of other tools

Thanks

anybody know why these photos aren't showing up?

I'll edit the first one for you. You take care of the rest.

Looks like you need to use the proper tags.

The outside of the welds don't concern me, it's the inside that counts... what do they look like? are they ground down and polished like the rest of the conical or are they just left the way they ended up after welding?

Well, they don't look like my Blichmann welds, and they definitely don't look like my keggle welds that were done by a bio-medical engineering welder.

Thanks for the help Yuri. I think we need to update the Wiki Help page for image posting. I followed it to a T.

My second post shows the welds on the interior of the conical. They don't look very polished by my estimation.

Should i grind and polish these? if so, how?

I am not a welding expert but you might run the risk of exposing pinholes that could be underneath the welds. I have done this during the grinding process and had to hit the spots again with the welder to fill them in. It was most likely due to lack of full gas coverage when welding. Also you might really screw up the fermenter when you try to grind way down there with a dremel.

I say just make sure you have that bottom soaked with sanitizer before every fermentation.

FYI you might want to try taking pics up close in "macro" mode. It lets you focus up close on objects if you have a point and shoot cam.

Thanks Hertz,

I did use macro mode "the little flower" i think my hands were a little shakey. Ill try and take a better one later.

I could boil some water and put it in there too to sanitize it.

I need to learn to weld.

I don't think learning to weld is the solution. Getting a quality product is the REAL solution.