How to drill into a freezer After not having done it this way, but having gotten lucky, here are my suggestions for drilling into a freezer without harming the coils inside. A chest freezer (my only experience) has cooling coils all around the inside wall about 2" apart and condensation coils all around the outside wall about 2" apart and they are staggered. Your mileage may vary according to brand. In order to *safely* determine where the coils are, you may need to open up a considerable portion of the outside wall of the freezer, adn therefore, you must be prepared to cover it up with something later on. I decided that since I was going to put taps through the wall anyway, I got two pieces of 16 gauge stainless steel, 6"x20" These would act as bulkheads through which I would attach the taps. What I did, and got lucky at, but you should not do, is to take a hole saw and bring the bit in the center back into the center until it only projected out about 1/8" beyond the teeth. I then proceeded to cut in and after a little cutting noticed that I had found a tube behind the sheet metal wall, and next to it an empty space. Into that empty space, I inserted a tin snips and all went well from then on. In fact, I ended up nicking the condensation tubing a little, but to no detriment (at least not in the short term). So the tin snips are the ideal way to open up holes, but how to start a hole for the tin snips. My best guess is that some sort of grinding tool be used, like a Dremel cut off wheel, or the edge if a grinding wheel in a drill motor, or a high speed 3" cutoff wheel. Go back and forth over an area of about a couple of inches long on a diagonal, that way, you are bound to hit both a tube and an open space. Keep wearing a groove and *very often* examine it closely. You are looking for anywhere where you are either breaking through, or about to break through. If there is a place which looks vulnerable to break through, use a fairly blunt cold chisel and tap gently to see if you can get it to split. Once split, get the tin snips in there. If you go slowly enough, even if you nick a tube, you will see that you have done it before you have done any real damage, and now you have your hole for the tin snips. Once you have opened up the outside wall sufficiently to expose at least two tubes, you can begin to use a screwdriver to gouge out the foamed in insulation until you uncover the tubes in the inside wall. You want to do this in two places on a horizontal line with each other at least a foot apart. If you are lucky, you will now have a horizontal "window" which is large enough to get a 1" hole saw between so you can make holes for your taps. Taps have a 7/8" shank and need to be spaced about 2.5" on center (you can get away with a little closer, but then it is not comfortable to pour from them). When you use the holesaw to make the tap holes, if you have to get the holes up close to the tubes, choose close to the cooling tubes on the inside, as opposed to the condensation tubes on the outside. The condensors are hot when in use. Once you have drilled holes for all your taps (and any thing else you want to run through), go to the outside wall and line a ruler up on the inner and outer coils and draw lines all the way acrosss the outside of the freezer so that you have an exact map of where the coils run. Put one of your SS bulkhead pieces up against the outer wall and position it so that if you drilled holes in the four corners all the way through, they would miss all the coils. While holding the SS in place, mark its outline on the outside wall. Then mark the coil positions on the SS. Take the SS off, clamp the two SS bulkhead pieces together securely and drill at least three holes in the top edge and three in the botton edge to accept #10 SS machine screws. Drill the holes a teeny bit oversize to accommodate errors. Take the outside bulkhead to the freezer and position it lining up with the lines on the freezer and the lines on the bulkhead. Use clamps to hold it in position and drill through the holes in the bulkhead and out the inside wall of the freezer. Put 3" (they may be a little long, I finally replaced them with 2.5") SS round head machine screws through to secure the outer bulkhead and install the inner bulkhead and tighten down the nuts to hold them together. Some reaming out of the drilled holes in the freezer wall may be necessary if you did not drill at a right angle to the freezer walls. Once you are able to install the bulkhead plates, remove the outer place and bolt the inner plate back on. Use the holes you previously drilled for the taps in the inner wall to scribe outlines onto the bulkhead. Cover the bulkhead with masking tape if necessary, or use Dykem and a scribe. Take both bulkheads off and reverse their orientation so that the marked face is up. Do not reverse them left to right, or top to bottom, reverse them so that the inner one is towards you and the outer one behind it, in the same orientation that they will be when they are installed. Secure them together with the machine screws so they are an immovable unit. Now you can drill the holes for the tap and any other necessary holes. Look for my article in the Sep/Oct 95 issue of Brewing Techniques on how to properly drill stainless steel (Building a Carbonator/Oxygenator Lid). Once you have all holes drilled, clean all the oil off of them and dress up the edges with a small Dremel round grinding stone. Put the bulkheads back on the freezer and test fit the taps and other fittings. Once everything fits fine, remove it all, lay a bead of clear silicone seal on the inner side of each bulkhead all around the edge and install them once again. Now get a spray can of Urethane expanding foam and fille the inner cavity completely. Put masking tape all over the inside and outside and lay down paper because this stuff is unpredicatable in the amount it will expand and when it comes out the hole, it is very hard to get off. Have some acetone ready and do not do this in an enclosed space with any flame source because the foam is quite flammable as it is expelled as is the acetone. When it has hardened for a day, use a screwdriver to open up any holes through the bulkheads. Regarding taps. I recommend that you get 5" or longer shanks. In this manner, a large portion of the shank is inside the freezer and it acts as a heatsink, keeping the tap nice an cold. If the tap is anywhere near one of the condensor coils, this will be more necessary than if it is not close to one.