Spile questions ?

[labman]

Can a person or has anyone made their own spiles ? The spiles I have found so far are 1.40 a piece I need 500 for buckets. Is there such a thing as spiles that work for both buckets and tubing? Is there any problems hanging a 5 gallon bucket on a 5/16th spile? I have all white plastic 5 gallon buckets. I was just wondering if you could use a piece of stainless pipe with someting like a washer welded towards the end and drill a hole in the side of the bucket and hang them that way?

[Fred Henderson]

Your spile need to have a taper so it tightens as it is driven into the tree. A 5gal bucket hanging on a splie would be much too heavy a will in all likelyhood pull the spile from the tree. You could use a plastic spile and tubing and sit the bucket on the ground, That is the way I did it for many years until I got metal buckets. The only problems that I had was on the roadside trees when the wind would blow the buckets would go airborne. A rock or a block of wood solved that problem.
Could you please tell us a little about yourself and where you are located. We are here to help each other and we have never bitten anyone. Merry Christmas.

[325abn]

I have used the plastic 5/6 spile with a bucket. Just drive a nail above the spile and hang your bucket on that. Dont forget to remove the nail at the end of the season.

Your doing 500 buckets?? What have you done in the past?

[labman]

I live in Loyal Wisconsin thats in central Wis. My son and I tapped 25 trees last year and boiled it down in a homemade pan and turned out pretty well. I have a woods behind my house that I have marked 500 trees in and have buckets that I got free from work last year we used spiles I bought at Fleet Farm and hung the buckets on them and I dont remember having any of them fall off But the plastic spiles with a hose sounds like a good Idea then the money spent wont be wasted if we do some tubing in the future. I have a neighbor that has a large setup with RO and Evaporator who I am taking the sap to so hopefully we wont bite off more than we can chew. Then work on Evaporator in the future. I have a Kawasaki Mule wth a 250 gallon tote in the back for collecting. thanks for the ideas and info

[Fred Henderson]

I hope that you are not planning on hauling that tote tank full with the mule!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Using buckets sitting on the ground is good because in some cases all you have to do is switch buckets and dump once. Good luck and post again to let us know how you are doing. :D