Converting a Shiny - advice sought

[aamcle]

I picked a odd Stainless pot(?), it seemed a good idea at the time but now I am struggling to find a use for it, apparently the army used it as a tea urn, it's double walled and has insulation between the walls. There is a tap and the top is soldered on, but it has a 5 or 6 inch hole and a plug to go into it, no heating element is fitted.

The top section and the bottom of the outer vessel are soft soldered into place, the volume of the outer vessel is about 33litres which would suit me very well and I even have a spare 3Kw element.

I seem to have 3 choices -

Use it as an insulated fermentation vessel.
Take the top off and use it as a biab pot, the inner vessel is about 24 litres in all the same as my Burco so I would gain very little.
Strip it and use the outer vessel as a biab pot, I could fit an element and it would be a fine size for me.

I'd go with 3 but I'm very afraid that the solder holding the base of the outer vessel would give way and leak.

This is where I need advice, if I were to run a bead of food grade silicone around the join between the base and the wall of the outer vessel and arranged to support the base from beneath possibly "resting" it on a band of material going right around the inside of the skirt section do you think it would be Ok and survive repeated heat cycling?



Many. Thanks. Aamcle

 

[Vossy1]

Are you sure they're soldered :hmm: , if so I'd be wary of using the outer pot in case the solder contains lead.

 

[aamcle]

It's soft solder right enough but as I grew up in a house with lead pipes so I'm not too bothered about it :-) . A good bead of Silicone should prevent the lead leaching into the wort.

Converting it is looking like more and more trouble I think it's going to end up as a winter time FV unless the urge to pull it to bits just overwhelms me! And it might easily do just that :grin:


Aamcle

 

[Fil]

Or could be an ideal foundation pot for a small batch one pot biab/cage brewery giving you upto 15l yeild for testing recipies??

 

[aamcle]

ideal foundation pot for a small batch one pot biab/cage brewery

That's what I think but the soft solder does my head in!!!!!

ATB aamcle