Ideas On Sealing Mash Tun Please

[Barley Belly]

I've decided to dip my toes into the world of AG, to see what all you guys are raving about.

I whipped together, after scouring this site and others for ideas, a 33l Mash Tun with some gear, I luckily had at home, and $20 worth of stuff from Bunnings.

I put it all together last night and decided to give it a test run, leak wise, with some hot tap water and some Napisan to clean off some stains that were on the inside.

Everything seemed to go well with no external leaks. I emptied it this morning before work and left upside down to dry in the shed all day.

Got home this arvo and tipped Tun over and had some water come out the top between the internal and external skins????
Now I'm not sure if this leaked internally or if it got in through the handles on the inside when I gave it a shake to wash all the Napisan around. What I can say is I don't want it to leak any sweet wort internally once I start mashing for real in it.

As you can see in the pictures below, I drilled a 19mm hole through the esky, inserted some threaded brass tube, sealed this either side with a piece of silicone bakeware and a flanged nut, than ran a piece of copper tube through it and sealed with copper olives and brass nuts, plus tap, the copper T pieces and elbows are pin punched on and the stainless braid is held on with stainless clamps.

I tightened the threaded brass tube with the washers, fairly tight without squashing the sides in too much, but any looser and it would be floppy.

Any ideas???
Biggers hard washers??
Silicon??

Any input would be good

Thanks

 

[the_fuzz]

Do you have plumbers tape on everything?

 

[TidalPete]

I've decided to dip my toes into the world of AG, to see what all you guys are raving about.

I whipped together, after scouring this site and others for ideas, a 33l Mash Tun with some gear, I luckily had at home, and $20 worth of stuff from Bunnings.

I put it all together last night and decided to give it a test run, leak wise, with some hot tap water and some Napisan to clean off some stains that were on the inside.

Everything seemed to go well with no external leaks. I emptied it this morning before work and left upside down to dry in the shed all day.

Got home this arvo and tipped Tun over and had some water come out the top between the internal and external skins????
Now I'm not sure if this leaked internally or if it got in through the handles on the inside when I gave it a shake to wash all the Napisan around. What I can say is I don't want it to leak any sweet wort internally once I start mashing for real in it.

As you can see in the pictures below, I drilled a 19mm hole through the esky, inserted some threaded brass tube, sealed this either side with a piece of silicone bakeware and a flanged nut, than ran a piece of copper tube through it and sealed with copper olives and brass nuts, plus tap, the copper T pieces and elbows are pin punched on and the stainless braid is held on with stainless clamps.

I tightened the threaded brass tube with the washers, fairly tight without squashing the sides in too much, but any looser and it would be floppy.

Any ideas???
Biggers hard washers??
Silicon??

Any input would be good

Thanks

finners,

If this is the same problem that I had with my Coleman mash tun then perhaps in the process of tightening both the inner & outer nuts on the all-thread going into your mash tun you have inadvertently applied too much pressure & split the inner or outer linings?
I realised after the fact that a spacer made of food-grade tubing would have stopped the Mash tun from squashing in so much.
Solved the problem by applying food-grade silicone to both inner & outer surfaces before re-assembling the all-thread & nuts.
Hope this helps?

TP :beer:

 

[afromaiko]

If you are meaning that you can't tighten it enough for fear of pulling the walls in, then you need to put a spacer in between the two walls. Dig some of the foam away with a screw driver and cut a piece on conduit to fit in the gap. Run a split along the conduit so that you can squeeze it up to insert. The spread it out again once inside. the walls will then pull up tight against the conduit and give you a good seal while stopping the whole thing from flopping about too.

Edit: Some others around here have also used food grade versions of Selley's "Knead It". And as mentioned, you need plumber's tape on all the threads.

 

[Barley Belly]

Do you have plumbers tape on everything?

Didn't use any.

Figured to keep it easy to pull apart to clean I would just use washers and no tape as tape might harbour germs.For the same reason I didn't use silcone.

Do you guys pull your Tun apart at all to clean it internally???


Will look at adding a spacer(will have to drill hole bigger as threaded tube was a screw in fit).

 

[Barley Belly]

Just finished rebuilding tun with conduit insert and plumbers tape on each thread.

Have about ten litres of boiling water in it, I will see how it goes.

Thanks again

 

[clean brewer]

Personally, I found the silicone bakeware to be not very good, I used on each side a black ring washer and the red fibre washers, and also backnuts.. Had no leaks after that..

 

[Pumpy]

I've decided to dip my toes into the world of AG, to see what all you guys are raving about.

I whipped together, after scouring this site and others for ideas, a 33l Mash Tun with some gear, I luckily had at home, and $20 worth of stuff from Bunnings.

I put it all together last night and decided to give it a test run, leak wise, with some hot tap water and some Napisan to clean off some stains that were on the inside.

Everything seemed to go well with no external leaks. I emptied it this morning before work and left upside down to dry in the shed all day.

Got home this arvo and tipped Tun over and had some water come out the top between the internal and external skins????
Now I'm not sure if this leaked internally or if it got in through the handles on the inside when I gave it a shake to wash all the Napisan around. What I can say is I don't want it to leak any sweet wort internally once I start mashing for real in it.

As you can see in the pictures below, I drilled a 19mm hole through the esky, inserted some threaded brass tube, sealed this either side with a piece of silicone bakeware and a flanged nut, than ran a piece of copper tube through it and sealed with copper olives and brass nuts, plus tap, the copper T pieces and elbows are pin punched on and the stainless braid is held on with stainless clamps.

I tightened the threaded brass tube with the washers, fairly tight without squashing the sides in too much, but any looser and it would be floppy.

Any ideas???
Biggers hard washers??
Silicon??

Any input would be good

Thanks

Finners the problem may be solved by placing a sleeve of plastic pipe over the threaded pipe between the two walls of your mashtun

the problem appears to me that the inner wall is unable to tighten onto something firm ,this is how I solved the problem in the keep cold cooler .

Pumpy

 

[Daniel.lear]

Finners,

Your setup looks good, but some of your leak issues could be solved by using a bigger surface area. On my tun I've used a home made copper washer on the inside (I had no SS sheet availible at the time) and a larger zinc coated steel washer on the outside. I've used gaskets made of cheap-arse sillicon baking trays.

Also thread tape is your freind. Only 79c from big green hardware store. I had a couple of leaks on my hlt, that were attributed to the water seeping along the threads. All were solved by liberal amounts of thread tape.

Good luck,

Leary