Making my first real post here, but been following the forum and appreciating all the info on here for a long time.
I have to say, one of the things I've enjoyed most about homebrewing (aside from the beer) is making stuff. Mash tuns, boil kettles, chillers and whatnot. So when after 12 brews my cheap plastic twin lever capper started struggling, I started looking for a bench capper. My LHBS carry them starting from 68, which was more than I had to spend at the moment. I had seen people using a drill press for capping. I didn't have one, but I did have this...
A drill press adapter, which you can use with a regular hand drill.
So the first thing I did was to complety destroy and butcher my old capper (drilling/cutting the rivets etc) until I had this:
Then I removed all the outer plastic bits and kept only the round bell part.
The bell part has some vertical ridges on it, but I sanded most of them down and left a small lip on each one. The lip stays under the clamp part of the drill press adapter clamp and keeps the bell from sliding upwards. I then added some tape to the bell part to keep it snug in the clamp.
Here's the final product:
I've only done dry tests on empty bottles so far, but it seems to work well. Some improvements to be made: padding under the bottle and maybe some silicone paste inside the bell as it is quite hard to get the bottle to release after capping.
I have to say, one of the things I've enjoyed most about homebrewing (aside from the beer) is making stuff. Mash tuns, boil kettles, chillers and whatnot. So when after 12 brews my cheap plastic twin lever capper started struggling, I started looking for a bench capper. My LHBS carry them starting from 68, which was more than I had to spend at the moment. I had seen people using a drill press for capping. I didn't have one, but I did have this...
A drill press adapter, which you can use with a regular hand drill.
So the first thing I did was to complety destroy and butcher my old capper (drilling/cutting the rivets etc) until I had this:
Then I removed all the outer plastic bits and kept only the round bell part.
The bell part has some vertical ridges on it, but I sanded most of them down and left a small lip on each one. The lip stays under the clamp part of the drill press adapter clamp and keeps the bell from sliding upwards. I then added some tape to the bell part to keep it snug in the clamp.
Here's the final product:
I've only done dry tests on empty bottles so far, but it seems to work well. Some improvements to be made: padding under the bottle and maybe some silicone paste inside the bell as it is quite hard to get the bottle to release after capping.
