Elements

I Finished wiring up the elements.  Started with 10' of 10/3 insulated wire with a 30 Amp, 250 Volt, NEMA L6-30P plug. The other end attaches to the element guards.  The elements are Camco 02963 5500W 240V Screw in Water Heater Lime Life Ripple Elements.  Here is a picture of all the parts for one element.

I used some braided sleeve and a aluminum 90 degree cable glad to secure the wire to the element guard.  Here is the element in the guard.  Not much room inside there.

Here is the cable before it's hooked up to the element.  The ground wire is attached the the element guard with a screw in lug.

Some pictures of the finished wired element.  It was not easy to get all the wiring inside the guard as there in not much room in there.  If fact, the element wrench will not even fit in the guard to tighten the element and I had to do it by hand by twisting the element itself.  I didn't really like doing that but it was the only choice.

There is a weep hole in the end of the guard in case it ever leaks the water isn't trapped inside the guard.  The silicon gasket is cut there to allow the water to drain and I lined up the clamp to allow it to drain as well.  Hopefully I won't have to ever try it out.

And finally a picture of the element inside the kettle.

On to the rest of the kettle plumbing!

More Painting

Finally almost done with painting.  Well actually I have been done with painting for a while but have been working on the finish.  After a few coats of base and about 4 coats of clear coat, I wet sanded the panel and then went through the rubbing compound -> machine polish -> hand glaze -> wax process.  This was a very time consuming process.  I also had to wait a while for the clear coat to finish curing.  This can take up to a month.  The other issue I had was to work on one side of the panel I would have to stand the panel on the opposite finished side which would tend to mar the finish and smear debris on that side.  To combat that issue I ended up building a sort of 'jig' to hold the panel while I worked on it.  This would let me work on one side while the opposite side hung suspended in the air and would not have to lay against the table.  Here are a few pictures of the 'jig' and how I worked on it.

I should be able to start assembling the panel within a week.  Then the real fun begins.  I'm tired of working on painting, it has taken way too long.  Pretty happy with how it looks though.

Welding

Still waiting on the clear to cure fully on the control panel but in the meantime I got back my BK and HLT from having some fittings welded on.  I had a 2" ferrule and a 1/2" half coupler welded on the BK and a 2" ferrule welded on the HLT.  The 2" ferrules will attach to the element guards and connect the heater elements to the kettles.  I had the welding done by a local guy who is on one of the Homebrew forums I'm on named Colebeer78.  If you are in the Chicago area and need welding look him up.

Here is a picture of the BK.

Here are a couple shots of the fittings after I got them back.

Here are a couple pictures after about 10 minutes of scrubbing with some Bar keepers Friend.

They turned out great.  Now I just have to wire up the elements and guards.  More when that's finished.