zeg
Well-Known Member
My mother was kind enough to give me a 'wort chiller kit' from the LHBS for my birthday. Yeah, yeah, it'd be slightly cheaper to get the parts at the hardware store... life's too short to worry about that.
Scoured the house for a round object approximately 7.5 inches in diameter with sufficient strength to use as a wrapping form. Managed to use a small cardboard hat box style box. No big problems making the main coils, though when I was trying to bend the ends for the intake/exhaust the problems hit.
The minor one: I screwed up and collapsed the copper tube by not using enough patience while bending on a small radius. D'oh!
The major one: while trying to make one of the small-radius bends happen, I noticed I was pushing awfully hard on my thumb. "This is kind of dumb," I thought to myself, but like we always do, I figured I could just get it done and then never do something so foolish again. Well, that plan didn't go so well. Foomp! Hey look, my thumb doesn't usually fold that far back!
So, well, I now have a copper wort chiller AND a sprained thumb. Not a major one, but ugh. Still a little work to get rid of leaks on the intake/exhaust because I've just got the hose clamp "solution." I'm going to try to make it work because I don't have a setup for soldering. I've at least arranged it so any drips are on the floor instead of into the wort..
Anyway, learn from my fail: be really careful trying to make small radius bends at the very end of a roll of copper tubing. The copper just may be stronger than your thumb.
Scoured the house for a round object approximately 7.5 inches in diameter with sufficient strength to use as a wrapping form. Managed to use a small cardboard hat box style box. No big problems making the main coils, though when I was trying to bend the ends for the intake/exhaust the problems hit.
The minor one: I screwed up and collapsed the copper tube by not using enough patience while bending on a small radius. D'oh!
The major one: while trying to make one of the small-radius bends happen, I noticed I was pushing awfully hard on my thumb. "This is kind of dumb," I thought to myself, but like we always do, I figured I could just get it done and then never do something so foolish again. Well, that plan didn't go so well. Foomp! Hey look, my thumb doesn't usually fold that far back!
So, well, I now have a copper wort chiller AND a sprained thumb. Not a major one, but ugh. Still a little work to get rid of leaks on the intake/exhaust because I've just got the hose clamp "solution." I'm going to try to make it work because I don't have a setup for soldering. I've at least arranged it so any drips are on the floor instead of into the wort..
Anyway, learn from my fail: be really careful trying to make small radius bends at the very end of a roll of copper tubing. The copper just may be stronger than your thumb.
