I am trying to cobble together a poor boy's air dryer. This is an old old
project for me. I scrounged most of a roll of 5/8" copper tubing back about
1985 and I've been hauling it around ever since. It's survived many moves,
two house purchases and one complete marriage, never used. However, I *knew*
I would do this someday. I met up with Scott Logan once and bought one of
his last "Aridifier" air filter units once. I hauled it out last night and
looked at the drain plumbing. Hmm. I looked at the paperwork and saw this
graphic of an airline drain:

http://www.tinyisland.com/images/airDrain.jpg

This looks really cool to me. Not only that, but I have nearly everything
I need to make it. Except the sight glass. Anyone know how such a sight
glass might be made (or purchased) and installed on a biggish pipe nipple
like the one in the picture?

I got the copper tubing manipulated into a reasonable 20" coil, vertical
axis, with the ends sticking straight up. I also scrubbed all the years of
oxide off the outside of the tubing, figuring it would lower the thermal
resistance (that's what they say to do on the copper arms of my spot welder
so I figure it would help here too). I used the Armstrong copper tubing
polisher my mom gave me along with a couple of pads of 0000 steel wool.
Today my arm is kind of sore, but I have a thing that looks like a weird
tuba down in my basement, and it's SHINY.

Today I'm going to cut off the bottom of a black plastic drum and the
copper coil should fit nicely in there. Pix if it works, eternal misery
if it doesn't .. this is all in support of getting my plasma cutter working.
I bought one and haven't dared cut with it because there's so much water
in my air, sigh.

Grant Erwin
in soggy W. Washington