I'm planning some mods ... funnel for burr exit because of too much coffee sticks on the inner wood

Yes, some of the older grinders have angled pieces of wood glued to the inside of the box, which basically funnels the grounds into the drawer. Here's a look inside a Dienes grinder with this feature:



There are probably other ways to achieve the same result, but this is simple: a couple angled wood strips & glue.

It looks like the wood strips also act as a guide for the grinds bin to keep it in place.

Yes. Dienes patented that spring placement in 1936, and it shows up in many of their models into the 50s. Later on Dienes stopped tapering the strips and just made them rectangular.

Several manufacturers incorporate the "funnel" aspect of the wood strips with a more conventional spring placement. I have a Zassenhaus mill with a pair of funnel strips and side-mounted springs. KyM also used a similar setup on some mills—only they use two wood strips and just a single spring above the drawer.

It works...the strips put the grinds where you want them and cuts down on the mess inside the box. Eventually features like these disappear, presumably the result of value engineering efforts intended to strip unnecessary costs out of each unit.

(Here's a good example of value engineering at work: Note that the drawer opening on that 1936 mill above has rounded corners. That's because the front face is a single pice of wood, and the corner seams are only visible from the sides of the box. That looks better, because the seams aren't visible from the front. However, this construction method uses more wood, because the front piece is full-sized, then is cut to accommodate the drawer. If you can live with the corner seams facing the front, then the front piece of wood is only 2/3rds the length of the other pieces and you can simplify a production step. Hence, many of the box mills—and subsequent vintages of the same Dienes model pictured above—have forward facing corners.)

Today a couple of Coffee Geeks and sig-others visited FotonDrv's pad west of Seattle to check out the Londinium I and have a thoroughly wonderful lunch (stuffed squid - wow!) with enough shots of Sweet Maria's #23 Workshop espresso blend to take us to Tuesday.

That Zass on the right stood wood to metal against the Pharos, with a cool Voodoo mod. Both made excellent shots in the L-I. Great lever machine, but that's for another channel.

It was indeed a good day! Coffeenoobie, the Prof and I were all grinding away on the Zass and the Pharos trying to find the differences.

The Pharos did not creep in it's adjustment and once both grinders were dialed in for the very nice roast that Prof provided we were off to pulling shots on the L-I. We could not tell a taste difference between grinders, only grind fineness(which affected taste) if we did not have it either dialed in properly.

We only had to let the L-I rest for 8 minutes once, and that was with 2 people grinding on 2 hand grinders and a 3rd person pulling shots, water and steam going.

The Sweet Maria's roast provided by Prof and the Behmor was very good and has movivated me into getting that roaster!

Thanks one and all to the participants!!

The Pharos is a way-cool grinder. This "Voodoo" mod to allow the bottom to slide out to remove the coffee makes good sense, at least coming from one who gets his coffee out of a (Zassenhaus) drawer. If the Pharos came standard with this, I would jump on board.

Although the Zass seemed to grind just as well, the Pharos has the huge advantage of being adjustable to a more precise level. The Zass grinder I set by feel before putting the beans in. When grinding, I have a finger against the knob so that it doesn't move. It works very well that way. But the difference between the men and the boys is the ...

...size of their shoes and the price of their toys. (That's the Guy Clark lyric, anyway.)

Interesting to see that this Zassenhaus could stand its ground against the Pharos. Given that this is one of the newer models with all the associated problems, I'm wondering if anyone has compared the Pharos to another hand grinder from the golden age of hand grinders, when construction was still more solid, especially adjustment mechanisms and bearings? Would be really interesting, at least for me, as I've been contemplating for quite a while whether the Pharos (or maybe the HG One) would be a step up over my Dienes Mokka 88. If this Zassenhaus was indistinguishable for shot quality when dialed in properly, then I don't think I will need to get a Pharos, as I currently have a Dienes 88 that's almost as new and works really well.

The Pharos had all the voodoodaddy mod's done and has zero problems. The original Pharos had the grounds retention issue which the modded one does not. The modded one has a better bearing and grounds adjustment setup also.

Methyltheobromin wrote:Interesting to see that this Zassenhaus could stand its ground against the Pharos. Given that this is one of the newer models with all the associated problems, I'm wondering if anyone has compared the Pharos to another hand grinder from the golden age of hand grinders, when construction was still more solid, especially adjustment mechanisms and bearings? Would be really interesting, at least for me, as I've been contemplating for quite a while whether the Pharos (or maybe the HG One) would be a step up over my Dienes Mokka 88. If this Zassenhaus was indistinguishable for shot quality when dialed in properly, then I don't think I will need to get a Pharos, as I currently have a Dienes 88 that's almost as new and works really well.

This particular Zass grinder is the best I've used, having gone through at least 4 dozen German grinders (KYM, Deines, Trosser, etc.) on eBay and other places. Most are gone now via CL and a couple are used for cereal grinding and spice grinding. A new Zass I got before this one couldn't do espresso well at all. I don't believe any hand grinder from the golden age has the precision that the Pharos (or HG-1) has.

But I am happy with the one I have.