I have been traveling in Asia and in some areas have had problems finding coffee necessities. Luckily, less than a month ago I was able to buy a Hario Slim grinder, which made it possible for me to purchase a big bag of beans and start grinding my own. I have been impressed with the portability and the performance of the grinder; my first impression was that this was the ideal grinder for the traveler.
I had been grinding a dark roast for awhile but yesterday I bought some new beans, medium roast. I got some strange results with the grind setting I was using before. The resulting grind came out almost like "flakes." So I decided to try and make the grind setting finer. I held the handle steady as the instructions specify, but the grinder would only turn two clicks to the right for the finer setting, and I could not get it to click at all when turning to the left. Any attempt to turn toward the coarse setting just caused the unit to come unscrewed.

Anyone know what might have been the problem here? Why would it not click at all but only unscrew when turning to the left? Could I have gotten a faulty grinder? or is there some trick to getting this to work properly?

at any rate, since turning to the left was unscrewing it, I decided I would just open it up, clean it, reassemble it, and try again. But when I unscrewed it and removed the inner burr, the outer burr suddenly slipped out, hit the floor, and shattered into pieces instantly.

I have to say I'm shocked how easily this essential part of the grinder was broken. And I am now questioning the overall durability of the unit. If the outer burr is this fragile, could it also get damaged during transport if the box/suitcase containing it were to get bumped or fall? It might prudent before transporting this grinder to disassemble it and put the burrs inside some cushioned material. I hope others who own this grinder can benefit from this information. Unfortunately mine, used for less than a month, is now useless.

Do any forum members have experience ordering replacement parts for the grinder from Hario? Will they ship internationally? Since I am currently in a not so accessible part of SE Asia, I am afraid it may be difficult for me to get this part replaced.

Krzysztof,

I'm sorry to hear about your broken burr. I broke a burr in a similar fashion when I was playing around with wet grinding with my Kyocera CM45-CF which uses a similar burr set and when I took it apart to clean it the outer burr fell into the sink in Hawaii and broke in two. I was able to tape it back together to be able to continue grinding, but it wasn't ideal.

Unfortunately, these sorts of grinders seem to be considered disposable, and replacement parts are hard to come by. I was able to order some Kyocera parts from Orphan Espresso and stocked up with another spare burr set when they had their closeout prior to launching their Lido 2. You can read more on my thoughts of the Kyocera here: Hand Grinder Choice: Orphan Espresso PFP vs. Porlex vs. Kyocera CM-45. I ended up spending more than double on my Kyocera with replacement parts keeping it running.

I was lucky to run across a Hario Slim new in box at a thrift store for $5 a few years ago, so I jumped on it. I was using it at work for pour-over and it worked OK for what it is. Good luck, I hope you can find some sort of replacement while you're travelling or have better luck finding replacement parts for your grinder.

On the bright side it is probably easier to get replacement parts in Asia than the US since it is a Japanese product. That said, it looks like they run just under $24 shipped in the US right now so they probably are cheaper to replace than fix at least here (and given that they first have to be shipped to the US, I'd hope they'd be even cheaper in Asia).

srevli wrote: Anyone know what might have been the problem here? Why would it not click at all but only unscrew when turning to the left? Could I have gotten a faulty grinder? or is there some trick to getting this to work properly?

This is normal. You just need to clean the unit to fix this problem. Sometimes bean fragments get stuck around the inner burr and hold it in place. A quick disassembly and reassembly should knock these pieces out and the inner burr will move again.

Chris, thanks for sharing your story of a similar accident.

My burr broke into four parts rather than two, but your repair story got me wondering. Maybe I could glue the burr back together using some food-safe ceramic glue and the grinder would become functional again? I have read about two kinds of glue used for ceramics: Epoxy and Dap. What do you think, is there any chance such a repair would work? Unfortunately even if it would, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to find the necessary "specialty" glues in these parts. I'm probably only going to be able to find very standard glues which are not food-safe.

Hugh, in Japan it would be easier, I imagine - but Japan is pretty much its own entity. In many parts of Asia, where coffee is scarce outside the largest cities and even in those cities is viewed as a luxury product to be consumed in a public cafe, finding this kind of stuff is almost impossible. Actually I had to go to a great deal of trouble just to get the Hario grinder. I got it mail ordered from a specialty shop that deals in imported products, paying a much higher price than the US price. The moral of the story: make sure you have everything you want/need for coffee preparation packed in your suitcase (and perhaps even some kind of back-up device in case your main one fails) before you leave the Western world.