drill holes or cut slits in homemade MT manifolds?

[illwadd]

I'm building a new manifold for my cooler (mash tun) and was thinking of drilling evenly spaced holes. Other than saving time by just cutting slits, are there any other advantages/disadvantages to either? thanks for your input.

[FSUplumber]

The problem I see with drilling holes is one piece of husk or grain will plug the hole. It would take a bunch of holes to reach the total area of one slot. My first manifold was a copper pipe one I built with slots and worked fine. I would go with slots.

Good Luck

[spiderwrangler]

I haven't used either (SS braid), but my thought on it may be that holes might be more likely to plug than slits, as the slits have a greater 'surface' area than holes. Depending on your hole sizes, a single chunk of grist or hull could cover a hole, but wouldn't be able to cover a slit... Anyone who has actually used one or both should feel free to chime in...

[keelanfish]

Mine is 1/2" copper pipe with slits installed in a octogon pattern in the bottom of the 10gallon igloo. It works great and was easy to build using a ban saw. If an equivalent area was drilled, I'm sure holes would work fine, but man, what a pain in the ass to drill all those. I sawed slits all on the same side of the pipe to about 1/3 the way through and spaced about 6 per inch. When assembled, the slits are positioned down. I've never had a stuck mash (knock on wood) and have been using the setup for about four years.

[illwadd]

slots it is. thanks for the input everyone.

[Monster Mash]

I haven't used either (SS braid), but my thought on it may be that holes might be more likely to plug than slits, as the slits have a greater 'surface' area than holes. Depending on your hole sizes, a single chunk of grist or hull could cover a hole, but wouldn't be able to cover a slit... Anyone who has actually used one or both should feel free to chime in...

I've used one with slits cut in it and it worked well but it was a pain to maintain. I used it for about a year and then finally switched to a braid. A SS braid is so much easier to clean and it gets much better flow. I just recently replaced my old 1/2" braid with a 1" monster braid...

[spiderwrangler]

Beauty!

[foomench]

I have perforated stainless for my Igloo Ice Cube false bottom, but I once drilled holes in copper tubing to make a sprinkler arm. I can tell you that was a major pain. It is hard to get a drill bit to go straight into a small curved pipe/tube surface a few hundred times. The bit wants to deflect around the curve.