Chevy Chase was quoted the other day as saying the 80s were a sort of response to the 70s. I fully agree with him. I stared thinking about the decades in my life time. The 70s were a strange time... Hippies, free love, transient lifestyles, and so on. Then the 80s came along and suddenly hippies gave way to yuppies, and materialism became important. Instead of dull drab brown clothes, there were exciting flashy clothes and such. People starting worrying about things like STDs and finances. Just say no to drugs. Then in the 90s, it sort of swung back the other way, grunge music became popular, as did its related clothing of flannel and boots. People sort of went back to the who cares attitude. Say yes to drugs. Then in the 2000s it sorta went back the other way. Anyway, I could go on and on, but it would take hours. It was just a passing thought and something you should reflect on in your spare time, to try and figure out what will happen in the 2010s, so you can have the upper hand and stay ahead of the game.
So back to the build. The next step in the journey to the Brutus 10 clone was to visit moving liquid from one vessel to another during the brewing process. The gold standard pump for brewing stands is the March 809. I procured one from eBay for about 100 bucks. Now I had to mount it on the structure. I decided to use some leftover steel from my wheel mounts and make a bracket. It ended up looking like this:
Next I needed some sort of cover for it, to prevent it from getting too hot from the burner above it, and to shield it from any boil over that may occur during the brewing process. For this, I bought a piece of sheet steel from Home Depot for a few bucks, and just bent it into shape, using a sort of jig I threw together.
I promise this cover is not nearly as rusty as it appears in the photo. Also you will notice JB weld! I learned that no matter how low you set the power on your welder, you still cannot weld really thin gauge steel without blowing a hole in it. So I had to resort to JB Weld to hold the back panel of the cover together. No big deal though, JB Weld is sandable and paintable, so when I am done, no one will ever know the difference.
Also, I did not like the way my gas plumbing was routed so I bought a few 90 degree angle pieces to keep the lines away from the heat of the burner, and to make it look better. I will take pictures of that for the next episode. This post was just get me back into the swing of things. Also, it is really hard to take pictures in my garage right now, because it is full of other stuff I have had to use recently for yard work and whatnot. I will be cleaning up the garage and getting back to building this thing by the end of the day.
Ok, back to worky.
