Help With Pan Building

[Tspuh90]

Hey Folks,

This will be my 2nd year sappin. First year I had about 5 taps and used a turkey fryer to cool down with. Now that I have my feet wet I'm moving up and currently building my 275 gallon evaporator, which is going smoothly and hope to finish this weekend.

Now I am moving on to making my pans for the evaporator. My plan is to use 22 gauge stainless steel with dividers and I was think 8 inch sides should be tall enough I hope with running about an inch of sap while boiling.

I am just looking for tips and tricks to help with the pan making if anyone out there has done it. My plan was to bend the steel with a metal brake, but that's not going to work so well with 8 inch sides because they will hit the brake when I'm bending it, and not allow me to bend it to the full 90 degrees I need. Or do I just cut all my sections of the pan and solder them together. I know tig welding would be best but I do not have access to one or know how to.

Any tips and how toos of your pan building experiences would be helpful. Thank you

[maple flats]

While some pans only go 8" tall far more are taller. As you boil, when the boil gets real hard, the sap will do a lot of jumping. The sides on my syrup pan (flat bottom) are 14" tall and on my flue pan has sides that are 24" tall. You want to be able to boil as hard as you can get, thus I suggest sides on a flat pan of at least 12" or you will lose some sap as geysers in the boil jump over the sides. You don't want to be bashful with the boil.

[MapleOak]

Sounds like you have a great jump on the project... Just a suggestion that you might want to try to buy a pan for your evaporator... Stainless is not an easy material to work with if you haven't welded it together... I bet you could find a flat pan and even have it shipped to you for close to the cost of making... and it would have all the valves to draw from... Another option is visit a machine shop to see if they can do something for you or maybe there is a trade school around that might do projects... Just make sure they can weld stainless!!!
If you're really looking to make your own pan you could always use carbon steel... someone once posted on here that carbon steel pans are essentially the same material as a cast iron pan... I'm sure there are more experts on this, but make sure everything you use is lead free...
Whatever you decide make sure you have a draw off (drain hole) on one of the sides...
The season is closing in fast and you don't want to be without a pan for that new arch... I was in that situation once with a 2x4 stainless pan that needed two sides attached and I wasn't able to do it!!!
Best of luck and I hope you're boiling on it all soon!!!