I'd never really taken much notice of coffee machines. A friend of mine had a couple of machines and one day while in his studio I saw these grand old lever machines, all restored and in working order. One caught my eye, I liked it because it had style, it was a Gaggia.

It was made in the 50s and had a bit of a car theme to it which l liked; fibreglass back, a convertible-style hood and that retro look. l made comment about it and my mate said 'You don't see many of these around anymore'. As l left that afternoon he said 'If you're after one of those you may as well make it yourself'.

A day or two later and after some discussion, we agreed to build four machines by NOT using original parts. We made timber patterns for the group bowls and sight glass and had them poured in a foundry. l drafted up the drawings and put them on auto cad. l turned up the taps on my lathe in sets, built the boilers and had them certified. We redid the front trays to get rid of the square front and to flare it out like a bumper bar.
We kept the electrics generic to the machines of today and made a conscious decision to keep them totally manual. So the group set up is much the same as they were; a nine bar spring in the head, same pistons and the asbestos seals are replaced with a food-grade tulip V packer seals.

l've got to say all this didn't happen over night, the years passed by and my mate and l never lost that desire to have four completed machines. We've both had them running in our homes for two years with no hiccups, although he claims he does a better job with the milk than l do - l agree to disagree and we laugh. The machines make great coffee and gives a good creme.

My only personal regret is that l didn't find this web site before l started, l hadn't realised how interested l had become in the world of coffee and the wealth of information on this site. l've spent hours reading peoples info, and no doubt l'll read a lot more.

Here are a couple of pics of one of the machines there all a little different to each other but we've given them all a lot of attention to detail and finish.
l hope you enjoy the pics as much as we've enjoyed the project
...Gary

the back is a polished metal with a gold pin line

the plastic top was one of a variety that we made this was on hand at the time we took the photos

Very cool machine indeed.

BUT, run on sentences, well they are not sentences if you don't use periods, all lower case, what you lost caps-lock key and can't find it? Are you 15? Seriously

While I appreciate attention to literary detail, please abide by the Guidelines for productive online discussion, notably the first and third one. Thanks.

tekomino wrote:BUT, run on sentences, well they are not sentences if you don't use periods, all lower case, what you lost caps-lock key and can't find it? Are you 15? Seriously

miff2000 wrote:...l hope you enjoy the pics as much as weve enjoyed the project

Wonderful restoration. I hope it gives you many years of espresso enjoyment.

Awesome machine. Did I get it right that you and your friend built 4 machines from scratch using no commercially available parts by partially copying old Gaggia parts? Wow... just wow

If you got any more pictures of the insides of your machine or the building process... please post them. sounds really interresting....


Congratulations to that awesome machine
cheers
Georg

Thanks for your comments Georg, yes l should have some more pics there,
lll post some more for you.
Gary

Some of the stages with the group

this is the 2 parts of the timber pattern , provided to the foundry for 4 sand casting , this part of the group houses the seals , one end is for the bowl and the ''T' section will bolt back to the boiler

these are the castings,before machining

2 off the completed outer housings of the group

A variety of parts
boiler , rack and pinion gears which we nitrided ,
on the green tile is a stainless casting of the knuckle , that holds the lever,
we made this in stainless, theres also a casting of one of the bowls,
a piston and the hat which is under the spring and on top of the piston,

Gary

and here's the gaggia:
Lever Espresso Machine Gallery

thanks for the pics, you're a clever bloke!

Awesome work Its the sort of stuff a mad Melbourne Swiss patternmaker mate of mine takes on "for fun". Are the other couple of units under way as well?

Nice to see yet another Vic based lever nut too

Very nice. How many years did they take to build?