Has anyone used mild steel for a brewstand? or is everyone using stainless?
What about 16 gauge steel 1.5. Inch tubing. Any issues?
Just thinking about all the stands I've seen posted in the forums I'd guess at least 85% are mild steel. I have a half dozen sticks of mild 1.5" square 14ga tubing sitting in my shop waiting to be chopped up and welded into a single tier rig...
Cheers!
I'm a brewer too. What is the reason you want the stand for the brew kettles to be made out of stainless? I made one for a buddy of mine that is a hard core brewer. Used square steel tubing and a dusting of spray paint. I only use one kettle and sparge with ladle. What sort of brew kettles are you planning to use?
Might just have a black sooty look to the welds when you're done, but it just wire brushes off. I still say you're pole vaulting over a mouse turd, but I've been accused of over engineering things a time or three too.
Lol - still on the fence and now digging into ancient history to help push you off?
You've read my saying this before but I'll say it again: I'd go with stainless if I were to do it again.
And that's with a stand that was designed to go easy on the coating (ie: with the integrated SS Floor Burners).
That coating (and the curing thereof) was such a righteous PITA that it ate up any savings over SS tubes.
Any stand that rests the kettles on the frame with the burners below is going to eat paint and then will rust if not maintained.
No, it's not going to rust to the point of being unsafe, it'll just become unattractive...
Cheers!
[...]Functionally safe, if ugly as sin? I think this is what he meant when he said, it will last 20 years untreated. Do you agree with this?[...]
Thanks Doug. One thing trippr raised with me is just how bloody difficult it is to truly "heat proof" with coating - and how costly it is to do it, these graduated periods of heating the unit in a professional garage dedicated to the practice. That's what drove me to stainless initially, anyway. Then I see stuff like your rig, a ton of mild steel rigs with coating - say, Ruby Street - and I....vacillate. I hear trippr's wisdom on the incredible amount of localized heat when you're throwing hi-pressure propane on a painted surface. But man, it is seriously more expensive. So I'm truly undecided. Part of me thinks, if it will get me going, and keep me going for 5 years, by then I'll have another plan in place anyway, and the few hundred committed to the mild, rotting frame, amortized, isn't a big deal. I literally don't know.
Incidentally your rig looks absolutely beautiful. Really clean, polished, obvious you put a lot of care in its design and build. Do you mean, just the coating job cost $100, or the rig, all in? (!) Thanks for the photo and another thought, Doug.
BTW, my welder's quote:
Labor: Mild, $650 + tax, ss, $780 + tax
Material: Mild, $200 + tax, ss, $430 + tax.
On material, it should be noted he quoted for 11 gauge, for some reason, when I asked for a 16 gauge job. He's been busy and I'm not ready to rock, so no rush on a revised quote, but there it is. Probably $100 less or so, so:
Mild: $750 + tax, ss $1110 + tax.
PS: On ss and MIG - what about solid core stainless wire and proper gas (forget Helium tri-mix, I found out - way too expensive, I found. But an Ar mix?); or, as I found out, flux core stainless?
Doug, thanks for pointing me to the Sabco. Taking another look, I find this intriguing:
If you are a welder, designer and have shop equipment and time, it would cost less of course. But it you are paying a fabricator, just go with something that has years of proving under its belt and has already been through the "prototyping" stages. It will save a lot of those "oops, I should have done x, y and z"
fwiw, that BrewMagic stand is clearly set up for keggles. Looking at how they fit together those inserts wouldn't work at all with flat bottom kettles... Cheers!
One question I probably know the answer to already. Can one learn to TIG on his own? I'm asking because it's not just about this project, but it's a skill I'd love to learn and actually become decent at. Building brewery things. Problem is, with our tech college, you can't even take welding 1 if you're not in the professional welding program. So everything would have to be self-taught.
One book I read said, don't even think of it till you master oxyacetylene. Thoughts?
I personally do not think your quotes are high. I do fabrication and can say that I would be near that. I made mine out of mild steel. It is a 3 tier, 25 gal setup. I made mine out of 1 1/2” x 1/8” angle and 1/8” flattened expanded metal. I use 2-20 tip NG jet burners and a 30 gal cooler MT. I brew exclusively outside and my rig stays outside. I bought a nice tarp and cover it. I’ve done nearly a 100 batches on that thing. I just painted it for a second time about 3 weeks ago after 7 years. My burner shrouds are 1/8” plate. They were really the only thing rusting. I just used high temp paint. I couldn’t bring myself to buy stainless. I have all the things for mig and tig. It was still too much for me to justify. If I were to build a stand again, it would be a 2 tier. I would make it out of 1x1x1/8” square tubing. I would make my heat/wind shrouds from stainless. I just made a guy a stand like this and the tubing was $65 a stick. If your wanting a show piece, then spend for stainless. It does look nice. Just my $.02
You can weld stainless with a stick welder but it just won't be as pretty as TIG. Will be just as strong or stronger though. Watch some YouTube vids of people running stick on stainless.
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