I fixed my coffee maker in a bad way, then in an awesome way

boing
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That looks like hell, and I bet you make great coffee!

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I carved a wood handle to match the shape of plastic one on my Venezuela-made pot and found it more comfortable. It has lasted for years.

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My mother-in-law replaced the broken top knob of her mocha pot with a hazelnut. Seriously. It’s still going strong about 5 years later though I mocked (mochad?) her at the time.

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Honestly prefer the first fix which makes the Bialetti look like an original exhibit from the Bauhaus Museum in Berlin.

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You know, they do sell the handle and the knob as spares. Same goes for the rubber gasket and the filter it holds in place, that do have to be replaced every so often, and definitely when the pot has been cooked this way.

Especially because a burnt or worn rubber gasket is a sure way to make really awful coffee.
A word of warnig: if you have a pre 2010 aluminium moka Bialetti is certainly made in Italy. Newer ones could be made in eastern countries, so check if they’ve a “Made in Italy” mark. and beware that in some case you could find cheap knockoffs.
By the way the coffe cup they resell with te Bialetti logo are quite nice, http://www.bialettishop.it/caffe/tazzine/6-tazzine-c-p-istituzionali-color.html and you could have’em color-coded for your convenience.

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I use the 3D printer to prototype stuff for fit before making it someplace nicer like say, shapeways. It isn’t free, but it will last muuuuuch longer and could end up looking super cool.

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I managed to save mine when it started to melt. It’s still going strong about five years later.

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I may just try making a replacement handle anyway though - and why stick to the original shape?

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There are three (3) — actually, as I think about it a moment longer, four (4) — lessons to be learned from this interesting account of failure and ultimate triumph.

  1. Old ways (wood as opposed to newfangled 3-D printed output) are the best ways.

  2. The wisdom of Edwin Land’s powerful dictum (in a global sense), to wit: “Solve the problem with what’s in the room.” (In this case, “in the room” is used to mean pre-existent vs. nonexistent, to wit: the bamboo is just lying around waiting to be used while the 3-D printed part had to be brought into the world from its microscopically small constituent particles).

  3. Occam’s Razor still applies: the simplest solution is usually the best solution.

  4. Mark’s aside — “As a believer in the sunk cost fallacy, I didn’t want to give up on making this thing work.” — demonstrates the key to creativity and an original take on the world and its opportunities aka problems, to wit: being irrational is the door to unexpected outcomes that occasionally are world-changing for the better.

As Alexander Liberman, the late, great creative director of Vogue and Condé Nast remarked, “Creativity is impossible without waste.”

It is imperative that you do stupid, irrational stuff like believe in fallacies if you hope to occasionally see — as Juan Matus aka Don Juan in Carlos Castañeda’s classic book, “The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge” said — “the rabbit jump out of the hat.”

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“big shot barista” is quite funny even if you didn’t mean it that way.

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Can’t read that without being reminded of Oblique Strategies.

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See also:

http://www.amazon.com/5-Day-Course-Thinking-Edward-Bono/dp/0140137890/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1462880307&sr=8-1&keywords=de+bono+five+day+course+in+thinking http://www.amazon.com/5-Day-Course-Thinking-Edward-Bono/dp/0140137890/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1462880307&sr=8-1&keywords=de+bono+five+day+course+in+thinking

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

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It wasn’t intentional and now when I reread it, it sounds disrespectful.

I think it was Kyle Glanville but I can’t find the video anywhere. I think it may have been on BBtv which seems to have disappeared.

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No, you’re too sensitive; not at all disrespectful, just funny.

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Snazzy handle! I have an aluminum one I don’t use that often it seems to get super hot and accumulates weird residue. We have a couple of stainless steel moka pots with metal handles. The design is such that the handle doesn’t get very hot, but even if it does it’s stainless steel so it won’t melt. They also don’t accumulate the weird residue inside, are easy to clean and seem indestructible. One of them I’ve had since 1990, and it was already several years old when it was given to me. So other than replacing gaskets, they’ll last forever.

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Similar to this one. They are a bit pricy, but you’ll never have to replace it.

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Though it can’t be seen directly, it’s easy to picture the very hot gases flowing around the pot when it’s on the burner. The handle that melted is sticking out in that flow, unprotected. But the knob on the lid is sheltered behind the bulk of the pot. (It’s in its lee, to use the nautical term.) I think that might have survived.

The replacement replacement looks badass, though. Well done, Mark!

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First of all, I just wanted to state for the record that I first learned the word “lee” as a kid from the book, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIM. It’s just kind of a Cool Story Bro thing I felt I had to inject for some reason. So for me it’s an owling term. :smile:

I agree with this assessment, but there’s something else to consider. A lot of people think a melting point is the be-all and end-all of a failure like this, but melting points are ranges and curves, not sharp points. As many a 9/11 Truther has been told: a thing doesn’t have to melt to pudding to become so piable that it fails strcturally. ABS (the most common printer plastic) and other amorphous solids melt over some pretty broad range, so I wouldn’t trust them with anything that has to be both hot and food-safe. I don’t know anything about how the Moka pot’s chambers are structured, but any vessel that holds pressurized water or steam cannot be relied upon to be at or below 100 C.

Where’s @shaddack?

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I was looking at my cezve this weekend, it’s brass, but the inside is tinned, and I started to wonder if they used any lead in the tinning process (it’s pretty old, the quality of the tinning is kind of suspect.) I should probably just buy a new one but I like the classic look of brass. I suppose I could spend $10 on a lead testing kit, but then why not just use that $10 towards a new cezve.

Lemme guess-- a Greek, a Turk, and an Armenian. I hope a fistfight didn’t break out. I would probably just give it to the Turks, the expanse and longevity of the Ottoman Empire means their influence stretches all across the region.

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@shaddack gone for another…eleven months?

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