Are you referring to the central stud in the kettle, and what do you mean by 'break off'? Photos would help.

The kettle is bronze, so repair should be possible. Probably best to consult someone with boiler repair experience.

Yeah it's the central stud.


Shown with solder. Broke about 0.5 cm above the bottom.

I tried to solder it but my solder was to soft. I'm reluctant to try with a solder with higher melting point without removing the heating elements first. I was planing to tap a hole in each of the broken pieces to screw them together but I didn't have the right tap on hand. For now I'we JB Welded the pieces together. Will se how it turns out overnight. If I'm not happy I'll grind down and do the taping later.

I did manage to get to the rod seal with a huge amount of force. The previous owner did not install the o-ring seal that goes into the u shaped seal. That's probably why the thing kept leaking...

Some pictures for the records.

The OEM style rod seal did not use an o-ring, and an o-ring might not be necessary with a u-cup seal. I don't use a an o-ring on my machine.
My experience with JB-WELD has been mixed, but that might be because I purchased the quick drying one, and not the original formula? In any case, in situations where a small amount of force was applied to the joint, it never held.

Plus one on the seal, I'm now using a custom made silicon square o ring which works well since a year or so.

Bot syre what JB weld is made of but I would not want anything other than lead free silver solder in my hot water supply...besides that, the force of the screw cap and steam pressure will be on that joint, think I'd want that one to be mechanically sound before holding my face in front of it while operating the beast..
It almost appears as if the rod is screwed in, can't you machine a stainless or brass rod to replace it somehow?

I guess the o-ring can't hurt. The old u-cup seal was pretty hard so it might just have been that to. Judging by how hard the nut holding the seal was tightened I'm guessing whoever replaced it last tightened it with a spanner socket before inserting the rod.

JB-Weld is supposedly food safe, but i agree that it's not optimal. For now I just wan't a quick fix so I can get pressure to test my other "handy" work. I'll test tonight after it has hardened for 24 hours (keeping my distance ).

I too think it might be screwed in, but I had no chance gripping the little stud that was left. If the JB-Weld is strong I might be able to unscrew it in its entirety. I would be quite easy to just use some threaded stainless steel and tap an appropriate sized hole in the top. May even smooth it out in the center section. I'm not proficient in the use of a lathe, but I might get a friend to do it if I'm not able to find threaded steel with the right threads.

Luckily the pressure will dissipate quickly on that large surface should the jb weld fail. The resulting flash boil would make me wamt to only fill the boiler up to three quarters or halfway for testing as you don't want water in the electrics or hot water all over you.

Think you'd need to drill out the remaining stub, if you have a friend with a lathe that would be your goto guy for this one as drilling out and replacing this rod is a bit of a precision job. Perhaps you first want to check orphan espresso or Francesco to see if someone knows how the rod is held in place?

(Guess that the thread inside the rod is not something you'll find straight off the shelf)

The old seal in mine was polyurethane, which is not too great for a steam application, the added O ring IMO does little more than applying extra pressure on the seal but you have the nut for that purpose. The pressure that seal has to withstand is only 0,2-0.4 bar depending on the set boiler temp/pressure.

The JB Weld failed. Guess I'm drilling it out and rethreading it.

Yep, cut to the chase. All things concerned, replacing the stud is the only viable answer as it not only has to endure the force of sealing the top closed, but also boiler pressure. I would recommend a machinist to remove the balance of the stud. Drilling out harder material embeded in soft is very tricky, at least the boiler isn't aluminum. Make sure to replace the stud with stainless, and there is a good possibility you may have to have one fabbed.

The original and replacement seals sold by Francesco and OE were not O-ringed. The nut holding it is usually tightened with a socket. Age, heat, and water then conspire to cement it in place.