After taking the weekend off to visit family and friends at "the cabin" we got back Sunday night to 2 of the 3 boxes I was expecting. With almost everything in place I figured I could at least finish off the taps, put the lid on, and organize all the lines. After a quick stop at Home Depot on my way home to pick up some conduit clamps to hold the tubing in place along the sides of the freezer, and a rubber mat ($20 for black rather than terra cotta) for the bottom. When I got home I started in on the taps by first installing the newly arrived faucets and shanks. Even though it was an easy way to start my confidence was high as I moved on to putting together the tap handles. I found the correct size drill bit and in the center of each chalkboard made myself a nice little pilot hole. Each chalkboard went onto the handle straight and look great! I am pumped and ready to put these guys on.
If you remember from the previous post, Jackie and I ran into a few issues when we had to glue some nuts together in order to screw the tap handles into the faucets. These were put to the test and utterly failed…The nuts in the two that were glued on with gorilla glue simply would not screw on, and the ones without gorilla glue came completely out of the handle. While disappointed I was not surprised and already had another solution in mind. When looking through a Williams brewing catalog that came with my drip tray I found the piece that I actually should of bought from the very start. A tap handle thread insert, which according to the site, will allow me to “Turn almost anything made out of wood into a tap handle!” This is of course what I am trying to do, so later that night I made my purchase, along with some beer ingredients, and will pick this project up later in the week.
Thankfully there was still more to do so day 4 was not a complete failure. I managed to successfully attach the freezer lid with very little trouble and then moved on to gluing the conduit clamps to the sides so I can run my lines in a nice orderly way. This also went very well and now that Jackie was home we took on the final project, gluing small but surprisingly powerful magnets to the back of the drip tray. With only a few broken magnets from them flying at one another we managed to get almost all 50 glued on. They, along with the conduit clamps are drying and we will pick this up tomorrow.
Pictures of the magnets glued onto the drip tray, the installed taps minus the handles, and a complete handle waiting for a thread insert.
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“When we drink, we get drunk. When we get drunk, we fall asleep. When we fall asleep, we commit no sin. When we commit no sin, we go to heaven. Sooooo, let's all get drunk and go to heaven!” – Brian O’Rourke
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