After the acid soak, much of the copper and brass came out either dingy or kinda greyish. I took some Brasso polish to the outside of the boiler, and steel wool to the inside, as well as all of the copper pipes. All of the brass fittings went into my vise and received a quick burnish with the wire brush attachment on my drill. The boiler is copper, but the boiler lid is brass, and after some work with the brush, it's almost golden.
Bolted the boiler back onto the frame, and started a "rough draft" assembly. I wanted to make sure that all of the pipes were in still in the correct shape, and putting the machine back together allowed me to go over it, top to bottom, with diagrams in hand, to see exactly what parts were needed. It's a lot easier to see what's missing from the steam valve if you try to assemble it first.
I decided off the bat to replace every bit of rubber on the machine except for the feet. Based on the amount of rust, scale and mold in the inside, I can't imagine that it had a good life before coming to my house. Whenever possible, I'm going with teflon seals, such as with the boiler gasket, the group gasket, and the autofill sensor gasket. There are also several copper washers that I've never seen before.
They're sort of rounded, like doughnuts; at least, when they're new. The ones on this machine are all flattened. Not sure what the advantage of this kind of washer is, but I'll trust the designers.
I found out that the wire brush attachment on my drill does wonders for all sorts of things on the machine. It cleaned up the steel screws that attach the boiler endplate to the boiler, and in the case of 5 of the screws, strip away all of the rust to show that there are serious bits of thread that have corroded completely away. Add those to the parts order...
Everything is coming along nicely, actually. Went to EPNW and ordered a buncha stuff: 48 pieces in all. One side note: wouldn't it be cool if the little red ball inside the sight glass were available in different designs, like an 8-ball, a little yellow happy face, a yin/yang ball, a disco ball, or a tiny planet Earth? Ok, for a 32-cent item it may be asking a bit much, but I'm just sayin'...
Only one part that EPNW doesn't have: the pipe that comes out of the boiler and goes to the bottom of the sight glass fitting, as seen below:
The welded fitting on the end has cracked and fallen off. I suppose i
could fabricate the piece myself, but while I am reasonably competent at replacing parts, I am not the best at making my own. So I'll see if I can't get the piece from the importer instead.
Still no battery for my camera yet.
by bushnell_a on Mon Apr 10, 2006 1:02 am 
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