I was shopping for some furniture at a little thrift store by my apartment and came across some of these vintage beer cans:
They were pretty cheap and I decided I needed to do something with them. I wasn't sure exactly what I would do with them but upon coming home and looking at my kegerator, I knew exactly what to do with them. So here are some pictures from the project and the results at the end.
All the cans had been drained but were all drained in various ways. The Iron City can had been shot with a BB and the shot was still rattling around in there (you can see where it almost exited the can to the left of their motto). The Schmidt can had been opened from the bottom with a churchkey. Finally, the Hamm's beer looks to have been drank normally with the poptop removed. The first thing I did was drill a hole into the bottom of each can:
There's probably a drill bit that could do this in one pass but I used three drill bits in increasing sizes to get try and get an even hole. The holes ended up being 1/2"; 7/16" holes would have worked even better. After I drilled the holes, I filled the cans with expanding foam. I choose expanding foam because it's light weight and seemed to provide good support to the cans. I'm worried about how long it will stand up, but I guess I'll find out. Here is the can filled with foam:
With the holes drilled and the cans full of foam, I next attached the brass insert to the can with some epoxy. I didn't use the actual inserts you get from brew shops because shipping was too much for them but I found almost the exact same product, just a bit deeper, from the local hardware store (I don't have a LHBS). For the epoxy, I used a 5 minute epoxy to get the insert in the right position but then added a longer setting and stronger epoxy on top to add more structural soundness so it would have the strength to pull beers.
And that's it! It was a pretty easy project and I'm pleased with the results. Here is each of the three cans on my tower. Apologies for the poor lighting.
They were pretty cheap and I decided I needed to do something with them. I wasn't sure exactly what I would do with them but upon coming home and looking at my kegerator, I knew exactly what to do with them. So here are some pictures from the project and the results at the end.
All the cans had been drained but were all drained in various ways. The Iron City can had been shot with a BB and the shot was still rattling around in there (you can see where it almost exited the can to the left of their motto). The Schmidt can had been opened from the bottom with a churchkey. Finally, the Hamm's beer looks to have been drank normally with the poptop removed. The first thing I did was drill a hole into the bottom of each can:
There's probably a drill bit that could do this in one pass but I used three drill bits in increasing sizes to get try and get an even hole. The holes ended up being 1/2"; 7/16" holes would have worked even better. After I drilled the holes, I filled the cans with expanding foam. I choose expanding foam because it's light weight and seemed to provide good support to the cans. I'm worried about how long it will stand up, but I guess I'll find out. Here is the can filled with foam:
With the holes drilled and the cans full of foam, I next attached the brass insert to the can with some epoxy. I didn't use the actual inserts you get from brew shops because shipping was too much for them but I found almost the exact same product, just a bit deeper, from the local hardware store (I don't have a LHBS). For the epoxy, I used a 5 minute epoxy to get the insert in the right position but then added a longer setting and stronger epoxy on top to add more structural soundness so it would have the strength to pull beers.
And that's it! It was a pretty easy project and I'm pleased with the results. Here is each of the three cans on my tower. Apologies for the poor lighting.
