plain jane bucket spiles

[thenewguy]

Hey guys, I went out and bought 30 brand new spiles today. I bought the DG cast aluminum spiles. All of my other spiles are the rolled stainless type and are starting to show lots of wear after been hammered in and out of the tree... I thought it would be nice to try something different, but after I got home and loooking at them, I noticed for starters they full of filings inside from the manufacturing process, the holes on the top for your lid wire to go through wasn't fully punched through and also the hole were the sap flows in was on and bottom and quite small... all of my older spiles the sap can flow
in from the end, or bottom....I was sorta concerned that there wasn't enough "open surface area" for sap to flow in and down the spile...are these designed to let only minimal air into the tap hole?? just curious... I picked these over the new 5/16" plastic health spile.. If there was a stainless or aluminum health spile I would have bought them, but the new plastic ones don't look like they were made to hold 2 gallon pails... I may pick up a few just to try....and that folks is my "2 cents"......lol

[Dave Y]

Leader makes a nice cast aluminum 5/16 bucket spile.

[Sugarmaker]

Local Sugarmaker Scott Durfee is making stainless spiles. I have one of his prototypes. He put some good improvements into them. You can contact him on the trader. Can't rember what he post under? I really dont know if he wants to make a lot, but never hurts to ask.

Chris

[markct]

i have some of the cast aluminum 5/16 spiles from leader and they seem to work real good with my plastic buckets and milk jugs, and i also have a few of the ones from ipl that look just like a tube with a washer on the end, they work good too but occasionaly they would dribble down the outside of the bucket partly, i see the newer ones have a groove machined to act as a drip edge which should take care of that minor problem, i liked them tho since the buckets and jugs seemed to stay on them better in wind and they are about half the cost of the cast leader ones