soonerspresso wrote:So, does the Naked come with a handle? It looks that way from the box, but I want to be sure.

Yes it came with a handle, that's what's wrapped in the bubble wrap in the original picture.

I have had one of the "Naked" portafilters for a while now. It has one interesting feature, the attaching lugs are made in an achiral way so that they can properly fit on the left hand threaded La Pavoni generation I and generation II, as well as the right handed Micro Casa a Leva, Olympia Cremina, etc.

I never used the handle that came with mine. It is sitting in a drawer some place. Meredith, the 1.2 kg macaw, liked to sit on the MCAL wooden handle and decided one day that the handle was a large nut. It was amazing the ease with which that large beak split the handle. Meredith was probably unhappy that there was not a tasty nut inside. (My MCAL is the brass model.) I replaced both the MCALs wooden handle and steel shaft with two pieces of brass stock that I shaped on a metal lathe. This looked so good that I decided to use matching brass portafilter handles too. I used titanium threaded rod to attach the first brass handle to the stock portafilter. (With brass threaded rod attachment the handle gets too hot.) Grade 5 titanium is a poor heat conductor. For the stainless steel Naked bottomless one I simply drilled and tapped the end of the brass handle after fabricating it.

The reality is that if one put a brass handle on a stainless steel portafilter, the thermal conductivity of stainless is poor enough so that there is never a problem with its getting too hot. The bar stock needs to be about 18mm in diameter, and you can use various lengths. To me the best handle length is about 11 to 12 cm. You could certainly use aluminium too, but be sure to use an alloy appropriate for machining.

Deciding between the OEM, Naked, and Penney bottomless portafilters. I read a thread somewhere about the Naked ones scoring the inside of the Cremina grouphead and that person not recommending it. Any thoughts? I've been leaning towards the OEM model, just because I've been happy with the craftsmanship of all the Olympia gear, but the Penney/Naked in stainless do look super nice.

I use a Naked portafilter for a year on daily basis, and can't see any changes on the grouphead (just changed the grouphead seal two weaks ago. The engraved version looks really nice.

I don't think you can go wrong with the Naked or Penney PFs. Both are very high quality.

I have experience with three out of the four naked PFs discussed here:

1. Original Penney
2. Current run Penney (Etsy-sourced)
3. Current OEM bottomless through Cerini

The Original Penney worked great on several vintage machines I used it with. I sold it with one of the vintage machines I restored. The current run Penney, however, had sharp corners on the lugs that caught on and scored (very lightly, albeit) the groups of two machines I tried it on. I returned it. Maybe I had a bad one??? I am using the Current OEM from Cerini with a 1yo current model Cremina and it's terrific. Feels just like the stock one, only bottomless. Probably, and forgive the tautology, because it's a stock one only bottomless!!