G'Day lever lovers ,

I am new to Home Barista and thought it would be good to introduce myself and share my project.

Recently ,I scraped together every last cent I had and bought a 1964 , A3 Boema ( an Australian made machine made of Italian parts eg Astoria Lever goop heads ) 2 group lever .

It is complete and generally in very good condition so the renovation won't be to extensive .

I plan to make a modification to the tray area allowing it to be adjustable in height as it will be working in my cafe when complete and has to be able to make large Take away milk coffees . Other than that it will be mainly polishing and replacing seals boiler bolts etc .

Also luckily it came with a natural gas heating element which I will modify to allow it to run on Liquid Propane gas ,but that will be stage two . Here are a couple of photos .

Ok I am on my iPad and it just won't up load photos but I will retry again tomorrow

All the best

Dave

Welcome! Can't wait to see pics!!!

Sue

Welcome David!

The Boema machines are a great bit of Australian history and you should be very pleased with it.
Just to fill you in a bit further about them. They were almost entirely manufactured in Australia, and rather that the group heads being Astoria, they based on the Astoria design and were cast here. This is why the Astoria seals don't quite fit. All of the castings used this beautiful rose colored brass alloy and are very heavy. It must have been what was avalible in the local foundary at the time.

Looking forward to follow your progress.

Thanks so much for that tip Gus,

It seems that over the history of ,boema or Bo-Ema as the early seals are stamped, through different owners much has been lost . For example Boema told me that the groups were Astoria heads .

Also I am very interested to learn more about the original partners Bo and Ema that founded the company .

I have not been able to see your reply till just now so I must check my settings .but thanks again for your reply.

I had a great day this morning when I discovered a company who can make custom piston seals for my machine.

I think they use laser cutters working from a cad system and they can basically cut anything that can be drawn .

They also have a range of materials available including food grade materials .

Actually , while I am thinking of it.

You might have some thoughts on this ,the original seals have been compressed and hardened over time and I need to make adjustments for this by making the new custom seals slightly bigger to get the same original fit .

Where I am getting stuck is I am having trouble seeing in my mind how snug the seals should be . I don't want to make them too big and risk slowing the piston and pulling time down ...I am also wondering if there are any adjustments that will allow me to adjust the piston speed to compensate for variation in seal drag .

Thanks again for the tip it has made a lot of the questions I had spinning in my head suddenly make sense.

All the best

Dave