Hi, I made these WDT tools and am looking for feedback. They work pretty good. Not too hard to make... most of my local coffee buddies think these are pretty fun.

The white, black, and white & black have the thickest needles at .8mm, the rainbow is .6mm, and the blue are .5mm. For the thicker needles the technique is slightly different. More up and down movement is required initially, in conjunction with the standard swirls or 'sun and moon' oscillating motion, to distribute the grind at the base of the bed. At about half way up the bed just the normal oscillating swirls i.e. sun and moon technique gets the job done fairly well.

FYI, I have thinner needles on order and will do another batch in a few weeks. Let me know what you think of these little widgets. Thanks!

Coffeeparrot

They are very pretty. Are those sewing pins?

I bought a set of 0.4mm 3D printer needles from amazon for $6.50 and stuck 'em into a cork from a big bottle of Belgian ale. Then I sanded the top flat so it would stand upside down on the counter. It works great but it's not as nice looking as yours.

I like a loop at the end so I don't scratch the basket.

I like the results using a Chateaux Latour 2008 cork best

I caved in and ordered a ready made WDT tool when ordering a knock box, to find out that finally the SSP burr set had completed breaking in and I do not really need it anymore...I'll still do the twist and turn but see little difference.

Those are fun. I grabbed a levercraft WDT when they had a b-stock sale so never got around to make a DIY one.

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

That is awesome! Good call on the .4mm jpender. Those are long, do they flex a lot?
Yes, indeed I am using sewing pins. The second and possibly final batch will be thinner needles. Think I got .27mm and .32mm so we will see the performance with those next


Nice a few varieties of homemade tools and great questions... I am not sure about grinding flat the pinheads previously prepared perfectly as particularly pointy pins, pressino. I try not to hit the inside of the basket much with my early morning WDT but it happens, it happens. I guess the needle will wear out the basket a bit. I will think about that more.
Loops might be good but not the easiest to make, they probably have to have the loop before going into the cork

If I find a small enough pinhead maybe that could contact the basket safely under the bed of coffee

A nerdy answer would be that maybe the pointy has less chance of forcing fines through the basket. And if mostly the outer pins contact the basket which is likely, pointy might be better because there is less metal on metal. It will probably still scratch with pointy but probably less than with ground ends. This is assuming the tool is not perfectly plumb the whole time it's in use, I know it's not when I use one!

Coffeeparrot wrote:That is awesome! Good call on the .4mm jpender. Those are long, do they flex a lot?

It wasn't an original idea. And no, they are fine. The tips are flat too so they don't scratch the basket and don't hurt to touch.

To be honest I'm not really sure they are doing anything most of the time. Part of my routine though, that five seconds of swirling.