In this thread I will show the cleanup, restoration and elegantly simple function of a 1948 one cup Vesuviana. It is their very first version of a one cup caffetiere and a second version overall. (Added 3/16/17: The thread evolves to show other Vesuvianas.)

Here's what I'm starting with.



This gives you an idea of the size. It's tiny!



More details will follow when I begin cleanup.

Very nice! This steel cup may pair with it. It measures about 3 5/8 in across the top rim, and the bottom is a smaller circle.

crazy4espresso wrote:I like the detail of the cup handle. Is that something that went away over time?

Yes. That detail alerted me to its probably being unusual.

Just using a term employed by Lucio del Piccolo (aka LVX on Home-Barista) for various coffee makers. Is this a moka pot? Well, kind of, but I think of it more generically as a brewing device. It works using principles of an Atomic coffee maker, where water heated in the boiler enters a pipe to the brew head after steam builds boiler pressure. So, you're not brewing with steam but with water under pressure that enters the pipe through a hole. Like the Atomic machines there's a hole at the top of the pipe, still in the boiler, so steam escapes and the flow is liquid water. Moka pots don't have that clever feature that helps prevent overheating.

Clean-up First

Last night and this morning I cleaned up my Lilliputian Vesuviana. The ingredient used to greatest abundance was a bucket of elbow grease to get into all of those tiny nooks. Following Lucio's guidelines I started with rubbing alcohol on cotton swabs to remove the yellow kitchen grease on the surface of the metal and Bakelite. Then I used metal polish, first Simichrome, then to preserve that I switched to Mother's Mag and Aluminum polish. I used ultra fine 0000 steel wool, which doesn't scratch the aluminum or Bakelite, and I wore throwaway nitrile gloves. The tarnish marks needed lots of rubbing to disappear. Here's where I started.

This is the cup before cleaning.



Here you can see crud on the Bakelite cap. This was quickly removed with 0000 steel wool without any added polish.



Here's the Bakelite handle after alcohol cleaning but before steel wool polishing. It has a small crack but is functional, so I'll leave it as is as a sign of age rather than apply filler.



In Lucio's restoration somehow he manages to remove the weighted overpressure valve from the cap. I couldn't see how to do that. My cap ring is held on sturdily with studs and a Bakelite tab. The rod at the end of the cap is distorted to keep it from falling out, so I just left it in place and rotated the cap to clean it as best I could using metal polish and steel wool. I removed caked dirt and used a pick on the remnants of the old, white rubber gasket and then washed everything with many passes of soap and water until no smell remained from the metal polish solvent.



I heeded Lucio's warning to not let curiosity drive me to try and remove the brass screws. One sits at the top, probably to seal a casting hole. The other is at the front of the group, where the pipe may have been inserted.

Links to the Vesuviana's History

For reference purposes, here's his write-up of this rare gem. Here is Lucio's post on the first version of the Vesuviana, complete with a photo. The Vesuviana in this thread has the same features as the second version, but it's the first Vesuviana caffetiere for brewing a single cup.

Lucio's post linked me to an important one by another HB member, pootoogoo (Sebastien), where he identifies the inventor of the Vesuviana as Cesare Bialetti. In that well-documented thread, the Vesuviana was the original design using the method employed by Atomic coffee makers. The Vesuviana patent predates the patent of the Robbiati coffee maker by seven months. According to Sebastien, the name, "Vesuviana," may have come from the risk of explosions when Cesare Bialetti was experimenting with the first aluminum prototypes in his kitchen during World War II.