Back in town!

Hi everyone. Sorry for the radio silence but we have been in oz since before Christmas and Emma and Cami are still there and coming back next Friday (YAY!!!!) but I have been here alone with Cooba for 2 weeks now. We had a great time in oz catching up with family and showing our precious little Cami off! Em still has the camera so we will post an album when she gets back and you can see how she has developed. For me, being with Cami pretty much 24/7 was just awesome and made the trip so very special for me. I really feel we bonded so much and she is at a stage where she is interacting so much more all the time. I remember Emma telling me about a book she was reading whilst pregnant that some Dads have an instant connection with their baby whilst others grows over time. I think I fit into the latter and that is not taking anything away from the love that is so much there from the start, but I feel that everyday my love for Cami just grows so much that it is hard to know where it is all coming from! Maybe also the fact she is very clearly saying "Daddy" has helped ... poor "Mummy" is beaten by "duck", "bird", "tree" and probably many more words soon! Here is a bit of a quick photo snapshot of some of the things that we got up to. These are only some of the pics on my iPhone so don't get offended if your photo isn't included yet.

Cami became addicted to ice (the healthy variety) and just loved standing at the "esky" sucking on cubes all day long! 

 We visited sim and Clare and had a lovely visit to Flynn's vineyard in Heathcote. I highly recommend the MC Shiraz!

Cute pic of Eliza, Cami and Em in the cubby that Zac put in for the girls.

Cami spent a LOT of time in the car seat traveling around and visiting everyone.

Cute smile again in our apartment kindly lent to us by Kat and Tim (friends of Dicko and Em).

Relaxing at St Kilda beach on a beautiful sunny and warm day.

How babies should eat! Nude and al-fresco!

Cami had her 1st birthday Party 1 mth early in oz, but had a great time with all the kids and adults! here she is with her special birthday balloon from aunty Sam.

With Daddy during lunch at Claypots (Emma's and my favorite restaurant) with aunty Emma as well.

 We headed across to Perth for 3 days at the end of my trip for a work meeting. Here we are at il-lidos in Cottesloe for dinner watching the sun set over the Indian Ocean whilst Cami was babysat by my old boss Joce and her daughter Eloise.

We snuck in a quick visit to Little Creatures brewery in Freo. Had a few pints of their single batch beer Big Dipper which was an amazing hoppy IPA. Took a pic of the description of the LCPA for some good recipe stealing ideas!

My first weekend back in Stavanger and the forecast was pretty good so we organized a quick ski trip into one of the turistforening hytte - Kvinen. Chuck, Blue, Rayray and Rob joined Coobs and me.

Unfortunately Coobs broke his "thumb" claw on the trip back and had to have surgery to remove it and the other one. He has been stuck inside all week with a bucket on his head which is lucky for him as it has snowed quite a bit at home and been very cold this week.

Lots of snow in the mountains. We had to spend a fair bit of time digging out the cabin to get in and the snow was pretty much up to the roof as you can see from this picture of the snow up past the window in one of the bedrooms. 

 This was our fridge. Just open the front door and leave the beers in the wall of snow!

Now the real reason for this blog post! I have been able to get stuck into a little work on my brewing machine in the last week. Mostly working on welding up the gas beam. Here I am leak testing it. Needless to say there were a few pinholes and I needed to grind back a few spots and reweld. I need it to be completely gas tight as Propane will go through this beam (even though it is only at 0.5psi I don't want to risk any leaks)!

Using my beer gas and regulator as the leak testing system and pressure gauge. 

Soapy water checking for leaks.

This was the final leak path and now it is all pressure tested at 40 times the working pressure! Tomorrow I will start with tack welding the whole frame/stand up and then I can start piecing it all together. Good stuff! Nothing better than playing with power tools and having a beer at the same time!

Cami ... and welding!

No, Cami hasn't learnt to weld yet, but I thought I should mention my beautiful daughter and show her off to the world, at the same time as talking about the progress on my semi-automated brewing machine.

I have been on solo night duties for the past week as we are trying to get Cami settled into a sleeping routine and get used to settling herself back to sleep when she wakes rather than needing a feed from Emma. So waking at 2 or 3am and being up and down a few more times for the rest of the evening is taking its toll especially when you are busy at work. But I shouldn't complain as I have a very beautiful daughter and Emma has had to put up with the lack of sleep for the past 9 months (I did help her a bit on difficult nights but she definitely has had the lions share of sleep deprivation).

Anyway, here is a cute video of Cami on a lazy Saturday morning (a hungover one for Emma).

Anyway, regarding my brewing machine, I have achieved a bit this week but also had some setbacks. When Emma was out last night enjoying a night out with some of her fellow mums, I celebrated a night alone with a lovely sleeping Cami by enjoying some home brew whilst playing with power tools (always a good combination). I decided to drill the 22mm holes in the gas beam where the gas will come and be distributed to the different burners. I used a "step bit" for this task which is a lot easier than a large drill bit, but it is still bloody hard especially on 3mm thick stainless steel which is tougher than nails. So I managed to drill the holes which needs lots of lubricating oil on the bit as well as a slow speed to prevent the stainless from heating up and becoming so hard that it can't be drilled through. There is also a fair kick when the bit bites in to the metal ... luckily no spilt beer! So I managed to get all 4 holes drilled and enjoy a few home brews as well.

Here is the gas beam with the holes drilled.

Today I also managed to tack weld the top part of the frame together which is more difficult than it looks as you need to ensure everything is flush and square. Once it is all welded out there is no turning back so it is essential to get it right. Lots of G clamps, set squares, ratchet straps and leveling aids!

Here is a pic of the top frame when tacked together and also some video of me doing some of the tacks.

Maybe I can blame it on the lack of sleep, but I realized today that I actually cut the gas beam and the other long horizontal 20mm too short (pity it wasn't too long). Lucky I have sufficient spare steel tubing to be able to cut some more but will need to do this with my grinder and a cutting disc as I only hired the metal saw for 1 weekend. Oh well, not the end off the world but certainly a bit frustrating.

Till next time - cheers and beers!

Welding, pumps, and solenoids ...

I bought my welding machine last week! I splashed out on an ESAB MIG unit (very reputable brand). The 3 options available were a normal stick/arc welder, a MIG unit, or a TIG unit.

For stainless welding TIG is generally considered the best, but this requires 2 hands coordinating the arc and feeding the electrode in. It is also generally considered the hardest to do well and since I am not even a welders a-hole, I figured to steer away from TIG. They can also be quite expensive machines.

The other end of the scale was a normal stick welder. You can get these units reasonably cheaply and you can get stainless Electrodes with flux on the outside, but it can be challenging to get a decent weld unless you have a heap of practice (welding is an art!). For stainless, stick welding doesn't necessarily provide great shielding gasses from the flux (compared to MIG and TIG) so there is a risk of corrosion creeping into the weld as well.

So the other option was MIG. MIG actually isn't the most recommended type of welding to use for stainless as it generally requires a specific blend of shielding gas (either very expensive tri-mix or a combination of argon and CO2 in roughly 98:2 ratio) and these gasses can be expensive. It also is said to be not the best on thin walled steel such as my kegs so that put me off a bit, but when all things were evaluated, I went with MIG. The main reasons I went with a MIG are that even a welders a-hole can generally get decent looking welds with a MIG unit, I can get reasonably cheap argon in disposable bottles from a shop nearby, you can use pure argon and get reasonable welds (even if they are higher than wider in general), the stainless qualities can be retained, and if you get a good unit, do plenty of practice, know your settings of wire speed vs voltage, weld in a special way for thin materials (focus the heat onto the coupling rather than the thin walled keg) then you should be able to do ok. It is also a good unit to use for general fabrication work down the track. From what I read, you generally get what you pay for with MIG units and the cheaper ones will give you a lot of grief with wire feeding, so I got a very reputable ESAB machine - Origo C141 to be precise!

So I got the welder, got some argon shielding gas with regulator, some stainless wire spools, welding helmet, and all the other necessary stuff and lay down some welds tonight for the first time. I didn't focus on anything critical or that will be on full view, and the welds were ok I guess, but I just welded up one of the brackets that will support one of the burners. I think for my first welds they weren't too bad and I think all the research I put into welding (wire speeds, gasses, push vs pull technique, whip vs weave, weld fit up, tip stick out distances, tip clearances, etc etc) will pay off.

I also picked up my awesome pumps for the system today as well as my gas solenoid valves! The pumps are the brewers standard March pump! These are the 809-HS pump and are a food grade, magnetic drive pump that will be responsible for transferring and recirculating various fluids from and between the different keggles. The solenoid valves will open when told to by the temperature controllers and let gas to the burners for heating the HLT and MLT. They are a NC (normally closed) valve so that they only need to be energized when gas is needed for burning.

So all in all, even though no major progress has been made on the brewing system, I feel as though there is really not much stopping me now from getting this beast on the road. Once I have done some more practice welds on less critical items, I might start tack welding the frame together and get that done before trying out some welds on the keg lids to ensure I have the wire speed and voltage correct to avoid any blow-outs on my precious kegs!

My ESAB MIG unit

The disposable argon gas bottles. Hopefully these will last a decent amount of welds.

My welding station ... with keg stool of course!

Not bad for my first welds.

The other side of the fillet.

My beautiful magnetic drive March pumps - the brewers standard!

My solenoid valves - clever things!