Pressino wrote:They are very cute. Do you think the pin tips should be left pointy or ground flat?

FWIW, I grind my needles "round" instead. Grinding a pure flat edge could still scrape the basket as it acts like a cutting tool. I know we're talking such minute and incremental wear, so it probably may not matter. Full circle back to the FWIW.

I completely agree...and I should have said "blunted" rather than "ground flat."

No, yeah, I almost mentioned the angles and stuff too but settled on it being over the top. True though! I don't know how long baskets last. Nice tip! It's a great point, bluntly put, grinding it round is a sharp idea.

I can't imagine these tools doing anything good to the baskets.

I originally just used some very thin sewing needles I had in a cork. This was fine for my standard baskets but not when I got a bottomless with deeper baskets. I bought .25 mm printer needles and installed them in a new cork. This size seems about right for me. I didn't like the .40mm as it only declumped large clumps and left the small bits untouched. The main issue is that they have a good bend going on which can be both a positive and negative depending on the coffee.

Baskets wear out eventually. I replaced my original Pavoni double just last year. About fifteen years of rather heavy home use, 8 of which was with wdt tools. It was deformed mostly, the holes were okay, but the seat to the PF was not fitting properly anymore. In shops it's about six months to a year depending on the shops volume. Most shops keep a few new baskets on hand for quick swap as needed.

Kaffe Bitte and jgood, turns out I do actually hit the bottom of the basket a bunch. The sides too! I guess if the tips just had tiny plastic tips like the size of a quinoa that would avoid any scratching. I'm don't care about getting another year or so out of a basket I just don't want metal in my coffee. That was one of the reasons I bailed out on Nespresso pods!

My grinder has the barista setting for single or double. If you click it twice quickly it's double and that's what I use.

What about this??!? Grind for a single, WDT it, give it a tap or two, then grind another single and WDT that. Dumb, silly or genius?

I have done the split wdt, next dose and wdt. Still do on occasion if I am a little off on the dose to begin with. I don't weigh either input or output as I find it annoying. I normally dose by eye. Dose to just above the basket and it's about right. Sometimes though a coffee behaves differently or has a different density etc

Coffeeparrot wrote:Kaffe Bitte and jgood, turns out I do actually hit the bottom of the basket a bunch. The sides too! I guess if the tips just had tiny plastic tips like the size of a quinoa that would avoid any scratching. I'm don't care about getting another year or so out of a basket I just don't want metal in my coffee. That was one of the reasons I bailed out on Nespresso pods!

My grinder has the barista setting for single or double. If you click it twice quickly it's double and that's what I use.

What about this??!? Grind for a single, WDT it, give it a tap or two, then grind another single and WDT that. Dumb, silly or genius?

I never purchased any of the commercially available WDT tools, and instead have been using straightened paper clips (the thinnest I had on hand) and it seems to have worked fine, as I mentioned in an earlier thread. I did consider the possibility of scratching the basket (I was using nanotech baskets at the time), which is why I decided against using pointed needles (like accupuncture, printer nozzle cleaning, and other needles...and why I asked about using pointed needles in this thread) in favor of a straightened paper clip. Of course the edge of the flat end of the paper clip was sharp enough to scrape the basket while in use, but since I stopped using nanotech coated baskets I just used a gentle WDT technique and didn't really worry too much about it.

Based on recent comments in the thread, I checked out on-line ads for several commercial WDT tools, and found that most of them seem to use pointed or sharply squared off distribution tips. I saw one possible (and expensive) exception on Amazon.

I see no reason why a rounded needle, of thin enough diameter, should not perform as well as needles with pointed or squared off tips, and plenty of reason why they would be less likely to scratch PF baskets.

Obviously it would be more costly for manufacturers to fabricate WDT tools with rounded tips, which is probably why most (if not all of them) don't do that. Maybe they should. Right after I hit the submit button on this post, I'm going to "fix" my two trusty paper clip WDT tools.