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Sealing DIY CO2 bottles
I seal the two liter bottles for a different reason - I use them for brine
shrimp hatchers. Here is a good way to make a gas-tight seal in the cap of
your DIY CO2 bottle:
Take a 10d (Ten Penny) nail, hold it with pliers, and heat it in a gas flame
(the kitchen stove is dandy) until it is quite hot, and MELT a hole in the
center of the plastic cap. Then, while the plastic around the hole is still
soft, quickly push a one to one and a half inch long piece of HARD plastic
air line in the hole. The hard air line I am talking about is the hard tubing
that carries air DOWN the air lift tube in a UG filter. Then, using epoxy,
(the kind that ends up in a texture like soft clay) form a nice neat fillet
around the air line, on the OUTSIDE of the cap. Be generous with the epoxy -
it adds a lot of strength to the assembly as well as sealing things quite
well.
This will give you a very sturdy, gas and water tight seal.
If you want to make "The World's Finest 5-Cent Brine Shrimp Hatcher" (Two
Liter soda bottles have a 5-cent deposit in Iowa), you use this cap assembly
at the bottom of the hatching bottle. The hatcher is finished by (a) using a
hot nail, melt-cut an inch and a half diameter hole in the BOTTOM of the
bottle, (b) melt two holes in the side of the bottle near the bottom, and (c)
making a hanger for the bottle out of an old coat hanger. Hang the bottle on
a nail, attach an air supply to the hard tubing, and fill with salt water and
brine shrimp eggs. Each hatcher can easily hatch a level teaspoon of eggs.
Hatching brine shrimp is OFF SUBJECT, but I figured I might as well give the
hatcher construction directions, as long as you were punching holes in the
plastic caps! :-)
In every instance where I have used Silicone Rubber to seal the holes, they
eventually develop leaks. The silicone rubber does not make a very good bond
with either the cap or the plastic tube.
Hope this will be useful.
Jean Olson
JOlson8590 at AOL_com
Out in the Boonies, near
Cambridge, Iowa