@oldmountainwoman: Vaseline is the recommended lubricant.
@namelus: I’ve done steam distillation and built several systems over time. Had several sub-par solutions before I got it right. The recurring problem is dumping enough energy out of the steam to get condensation to occur. Everything works fine for a little while but then the condensation container heats up above boiling and all you get out is steam. So you have to cool the condensation container somehow. Air-cooling a bare copper coil like you see in Hollywood moonshine sets doesn’t work well. I guess if you had a huge enough copper coil, but I’m too lazy to do the math on that.
There are two approaches. One is to have a condenser that uses a pan of water as a lid and let the pan of water absorb the energy. You need to change out the water periodically when it starts steaming on its own. Bigger pans of water require fewer changes over time. The other is to use a coiled tube style condenser and encase it in a water jacket. Then you can circulate cool water through the jacket. I built one that is packable out of 4″ PVC pipe but it depends on long hoses and a flowing stream to maintain the circulation. That’s really a base camp / BOL solution because you’re going to be building a support framework for everything on site.
Bottom line, I wouldn’t go to the trouble unless I had a situation where I needed to remove VOC’s and other contaminants that would ruin a typical gravity filter or sand filter.