That is great. I didn't know there were sight glass surrounds like that. I made one which shows once again that making do without a machine shop can be done but - at least in my hands - the result just doesn't compare.

for alloy polishing i found Autosol (paste in a tube) to be most excellent. After you finish polishing that part- rub on a little bees wax (or karnauba wax) to maintain the shine.

About sand blasting: I found a local radiator repair shop with a blaster. The allowed me to use it myself if I give them beer... I recently stripped a Sama chassis and cabinet in minutes... Only way to go- and creates a great surface for repairing. Nothing more satisfying. Wire brushes and caustic chemicals? Fogettaboutit...

Boiler studs done.

To finish up this boiler nonsense the stud with the broken bit inside was drilled out today. Luckily I was able to use a Recoil (helicoil) so that I can still use an M8 stud like the other 3 holes. Here is the boiler being test fitted to the primed frame so that I could make sure the group lined up nice and straight.



The group lines up perfectly, there is a little wiggle room so you can adjust its position before tightening the studs down. Obviously those hex head bolts I used are just temporary.




The reason I have gone a bit overboard on this stud drilling is to show how much work goes into these things, and this was a worse case scenario.

A quick word on these Recoils, they supposedly create a stronger thread than was originally there because the threads mate better than a normal tapped hole and a bolt. For that reason all 4 holes now have these recoils.

Lastly it was touch and go whether or not that dodgy hole would have an M8 stud. If the recoil did not fit I was going to tap it to an M10 thread. The problem then would be having one M10 and three M8 bolts/nuts on display. So......

I made myself a screw from a piece of bar stock. One end is M10 and the other was M8. This was to make sure that the 4 nuts on the outside of the boiler were all M8.



In the end I didn't have to use this but it was good fun making this on the lathe.

sorrentinacoffee wrote:for alloy polishing i found Autosol (paste in a tube) to be most excellent. After you finish polishing that part- rub on a little bees wax (or karnauba wax) to maintain the shine.

About sand blasting: I found a local radiator repair shop with a blaster. The allowed me to use it myself if I give them beer... I recently stripped a Sama chassis and cabinet in minutes... Only way to go- and creates a great surface for repairing. Nothing more satisfying. Wire brushes and caustic chemicals? Fogettaboutit...

Yes agreed on the sand blasting, i've always done it this way so it's no big deal for me and a good way to switch off for an hour or so. I will move my workshop later this year so will have more space for a blast cabinet.

Autosol is not bad, I find it great for doing light buffing of already decent metal. It's just a bit too greasy and messy for me so I prefer using the professional compounds and a buffing wheel. Quicker, and if you do it right hardly any clean up at all. Here's a few pieces of some Cafelat tampers I did yesterday, from raw CNC machine finish to mirror finish in about 30 seconds.



The sight glass surround seems to be made of a much lower grade aluminium than my tampers as it has dulled to a light grey very quickly.

Paul,

Thank you so much for sharing your restoration know-how over the years. I'm eager to see you write more about metal polishing. I've recently struggled with steel case plates on my Conti Prestina and went from that to polishing for hours by hand on Microcimbali boilers. If there are easier or better ways to do this, please let us know! Here's the relevant part of the Prestina thread:

Conti Prestina Restoration

I noticed on your old site that you've still kept live (thank you!) that sometimes you choose a brushed steel finish instead of polishing.

But then on your aluminum sight glass, very different I know, you use a polishing machine. Do you have a photo of that? Have you posted anything on steel panels?

Tks. Gary. I just need to get a few orders out first and then will do some photos on polishing next week. You will find most machine shops should be able to do this for you, also chrome platers and polishers are the same business since before plating they must polish it.

Paul

Paul_Pratt wrote: I'll weigh the group later but I think it is easily over 10kg.

I weighed mine and it was 26lbs or 11.79kg.

I'll be watching your rebuild closely as I have the same machine and it's been a year in pieces. I've basically replaced everything - going as far as buying the pipe end fittings and a small pipe/tube bender to make all new ones.

Here is my thread - Today was a good day - Gaggia Orione!

KnowGood wrote:I weighed mine and it was 26lbs or 11.79kg.

I'll be watching your rebuild closely as I have the same machine and it's been a year in pieces. I've basically replaced everything - going as far as buying the pipe end fittings and a small pipe/tube bender to make all new ones.

Here is my thread - Today was a good day - Gaggia Orione!

Yes I used your thread when I was buying the machine to know what I was getting since I had no internal shots. Very cool, I happen to think your thermostat is original, it is certainly period anyway.

Why are you making new pipes? My pipes have some nickel plating on them I think.

Paul

I have made a little progress doing small jobs inbetween cafelat orders.

The frame and the side panels have been completed. Here I am testing how they look and also so that I can see how the drain box fits. I just realised that the drain box is missing, so I am going to use a new faema E61 box I have in stock. It will need a bit of fettling but it should fit ok.



The welding on the frame is extremely poor with weld spatter everywhere.

I have cleaned the group components, they were totally caked in putrid grease which was an absolute pig to remove. Ironically the grease which was meant to lubricate and protect the parts seems to have corroded the spring and removed the zinc plating where it was in the grease. Here are most of the group components laid out after a few hours of cleaning. The last job on the group is to take apart the actual inners of the group, maybe tomorrow.



The chrome on the group is actually very good. I am still wondering what to do about the main group part as the chrome is perfect but it has some large dents that are just annoying me too much to leave it as is. I needed today to remove the bearings from the group, there are two of them on either side of the group.

If you need to tap out a bearing like this from inside a component and you can access it from both ends, I like to use sockets to knock them out. Since we all have a wide range of different sized sockets you choose the largest one you can so you can access the bearing. I also ended up using an extension in the socket as well.



A quick tap with a hammer and it popped out very easily.



For the other bearing that was attached to the splined shaft I had to use a proper bearing puller.



Here are both bearings off the splined shaft. They seem quite knackered so they will be replaced.




I had a few minutes left so I decided to take a look at the outer red body panels that go on the back and sides. These were in bad shape, I was hoping to clean them up and use some T-Cut paint cutting compound to restore them. Painting them was my last choice since it would have been difficult to get the exact paint match and the dodgy 70's colours on these machines are part of their charm.

However it was easier than I thought. Here is one of the panels after a clean in warm soapy water and a lot of rubbing. I dried it and then applied some Meguiar's car polish. It came up a treat and I am so happy I can have the original panels in perfect condition.



And here is a quick test fit to see how they look on the frame with the newly painted black side rails.



If I get time tomorrow I will take the group apart (hopefully) and put the boiler into the frame. The boiler is 90% ready to go back.

Here are some pics of my drip tray:





If you need some measurements let me know.