Economy Kettle

Ok. So I soldered all of my fittings on my Concord kettle. The Chinese "stainless steel" is not the same as the stainless steel in the 3 kegs I've soldered fittings on before. First of all its like butter compared to drilling and punching holes in kegs. I didn't mind that at all. However, due to this steel not being as hard or strong it wasn't able to stand up to the dimpling process. All 4 of the holes tore as I pulled the dimple. I've dimpled and soldered over a dozen fittings on kegs without any taring.

I was able to solder them and get a water tight seal, but it was difficult. Due to the tares, the molten solder would drip through onto the ground. I after heating to melt the solder, I turned off the torch and added more solder as it dried to fill in the gap. It worked, but it was a pain.

I also soldered a tri-clamp fitting from brewhardware without any issues.

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The irony being that all of those cracks probably gave you a stronger solder hold in the end because of all the extra surface area the solder has to hold onto.

 

The kegs are much thicker than the "Chinese" stainless steel pots (or any stainless pots for that matter)... the hole you pictured looks just like the holes I made when I was applying too much pressure and drilling too fast... I switched to a better variable speed drill and problems were solved.(and used wd40 for cutting oil)

 

After I saw the first dimple had cracked I went very slow for the remaining ones and used lots of cutting oil but that didn't make a difference. The kettle is supposedly 1mm thick, which is the same as what I measured on the lid I cut off of one of my kegs.

 

I have a concord pot as well as a keggle and I can tell you with confidence that a keg is thicker.. I also own much cheaper and thinner bayou classic kettles and I drilled about 15 holes in all of mine... when I drilled too fast with pressure or the bit was dulling I got the results like pictured... I then made another trip to harbor frieght and the next few holes came out fine ... when I didnt have a sharp bit I compensated by drilling 90% from the outside and then the last ten percent from the inside and cleaned up that bent area pretty well.

edit a quick google search states most kegs are beween 1.5 and 2.00mm thick and some are as thin as 1.2mm in some areas... they average 1.5mm at the sidewalls.

 

And that's why I got rid of my keggle, it was damn heavy and a pain in the ass to lug around to clean. These 20g concord kettles are far superior imo, and cheaper than a keg by far.

 

Yup...

If converting for electric, the lighter the better in my opinion. But don't drop it.

 

yup same here... keggle sits in my attic with the cooler mashtun and 13 gallon ballinton kettle I upsized from... got just about everything to build a second setup to throw on craigslist now.