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keg conversion
I have been helped tremendously by people asking questions on this form so I thought I would take a few pics as I convert my keg to a brew kettle with ball valve and hope it helps someone.
1. Plasma cut top of keg off leaves about a 1" rim. make sure the pressure is drained before attempting. Can't really help you out with this step took it to my buddies house who has one and he chopped em off for me.
2. with a die grinder with cutting wheel (what I used) or sazsaw with metal blade cut about 1-1 1/2 metal "petals" as seen in photo
http://i427.photobucket.com/albums/pp35 … petals.jpg
3. Get a pair of vise grips and clamp on to one of the petas and move it up and down until it snaps off. I read I think it was thirsty's post on this and it didn't seem bad but let me tell you I was tired after snapping off 2 of them. LOL but it was worth it.
4. grind the jagged edge that was left smooth with a die grinder with grinding wheel, which I will be doing tommorrow i did a rough one here
http://i427.photobucket.com/albums/pp35 … stdone.jpg
tomorrow I will be drilling the hole and installing the 1/2 inch ball valve I will take pics and post with instructions tomorrow. Sorry about the so so pics they are from my iphone no digital camera 
day 2
5. I ground down the left over jagged petals with my die grinder and smoothed them out. still needs a little bit of touch up grinding.
6. drilled my hole with a hole saw. Start out by finding where you want your hole at. I put mine 90 degrees away from the handles. put mine about 1 - 1 1/2 inches from the bottom because I'm going to put a pickup tube in and cover it in SS mesh to strain out the hops. start with a 1/8 or 1/4 bit and drill starter hole. then use hole saw to finish it. see pic
http://i427.photobucket.com/albums/pp35 … eghole.jpg
7. I heard a lot of talk about buying a weldless fitting and then buying a 1/2 ball valve. I just built a weldless fitting for about 8.00 and used a SS 1/2 elbow i bought at my plumbing store for 2.50. I went to menards and bought a 1/2 brass all threaded close, 1/2 brass bulk head fitting, 2 o-rings which i'm kinda worried about, i'm going to go to my ace and see if they high temp silicone ones there. a SS 3/4 washer.
inside stainless elbow
http://i427.photobucket.com/albums/pp35 … eelbow.jpg
outside 1/2 ball valve
http://i427.photobucket.com/albums/pp35 … handle.jpg
filled keg up with sculding hot water and oxyclean cleaned inside of keg and tested valve. All good.
tomorrow I will be waiting for my bayou burner because i'm going to boil a couple of gallons and test the o-rings and see if I need the high temp silicone ones.
day 3
kind of a lazy day but here is what i did.
8. burner came in I attached the keg to the burner since I heat up my sparge water on the stove all I need the burner for is the kettle. I used what is called 9 wire and just attatched it on 2 sides down on the burner no biggie you can also use a coat hanger but they break really easy. here is a pic of the keg attached to the burner stand.
http://i427.photobucket.com/albums/pp35 … keg005.jpg
I felt that the only way to have peace of mind was to attach the keg to the stand this way there is 0% chance of the keg falling off or toppling over.
here is a pic o fthe front.
http://i427.photobucket.com/albums/pp35 … keg004.jpg
9. filled keg up and boiled everything went well can't wait to test it out on brew day.
i'll post my 5 gallon boil times when i brew just to see how they compare or what you should expect with this setup
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