Tom,

I use leather punches to cut small gaskets. Doug and Barb pointed me at McMaster-Carr and similar to source my boiler gasket material. But I pooched that one and was lucky to find one OEM in fiber. The large ones can be cut with scissors or a hobby knife and a leather punch. If I had to do it again I would make a cardboard template first. Some have mentioned getting a plumber do it for them. And this looks like enough assurance:

jonny wrote:For a boiler gasket, I bought some viton gasket material from ebay.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Viton-Rubber-Ga ... 3cce7bcd6d
I needed a piece that was at least 7" in the smallest dimension, so I let them know, and they made sure I got a piece that met this criteria. I definitely recommend them.

drgary wrote:Tom,

I use leather punches to cut small gaskets. Doug and Barb pointed me at McMaster-Carr and similar to source my boiler gasket material. But I pooched that one and was lucky to find one OEM in fiber. The large ones can be cut with scissors or a hobby knife and a leather punch. If I had to do it again I would make a cardboard template first. Some have mentioned getting a plumber do it for them. And this looks like enough assurance:

Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear enough, the big one won't be a problem. I can trace the boiler and holes etc and use hobby knives and such. What I was referring to was the tiny 1/3-1/2" diameter perfectly round "bib" washers in the valves. I could get close with a razor, maybe even trim them a bit, but they won't be clean lines where I likely need them. I don't have a leather punch, but if I can avoid buying another special uni-tasker tool, I'd prefer that route. I also need to dig deeper into various websites and see if I can just source them directly.

I bought leather punch sets on eBay very inexpensively and now have a progressive set of about 12 for maybe $20 (less these days). I regularly use them when renewing steam valve gaskets and such on all of my machines. A bibb washer is easy to cut with one of these small punches and I did that when restoring my Cremina. This is one of my two punch sets (with a couple of them removed and in use).

Just email them and let them know that you need at least ___ inch diameter gasket out of the material. That's what I did and they were happy to make the accommodation. I like it because it's soft, which makes it easy to cut and it seals up well. I also have a bunch left over from the middle and the corners for smaller gaskets in the future. I haven't tried cutting fiber gasket material, but it is stiff, so I would assume it's a bit tougher to cut. The steam/water valve gaskets I got from OE. They don't sell them anymore (maybe ask if they have some lying around?), so you'd have to cut them out yourself with punches, like Dr. Gary pointed out.

Here's the piston I made yesterday. Lathe time was about an hour and half but I spent a while beforehand figuring out the way to do it and picking up the brass stock.





Luckily the piston that Gor posted before was very close to a Faema piston so I was able to work off that a bit, this piston will use the Faema seals which fingers crossed will work with the Conti.




By the way, just got word from Ascaso that they no longer stock and have stopped production of Faema/Futurmat pistons.

The lifesaver!

Now, I just have to track down a spring, which hopefully, shouldn't be as hard.

You got lucky Tom! Nice to have folks that have the knowledge and ability to do such things.

Wow, that piston head is gorgeous-very nice Mr Pratt!! Tom your machine is going to have quite the "provenance" after this adventure.
BTW try Fracino in UK for a spring. I found parts there for my Spanish Gaggia Visacrem that I could not find here in the States. Sue there was extremely pleasant and helpful. Send them an Email and see what they have; the other place that I could recommend also is Espressounderground.co.uk...also a wide range of parts and helpful.
Happy weekend.

I am pretty lucky. I have a wood shop and a good friend is a machinest with a machine shop in his basement. Between the two of us, I have yet to find anything we could not make/fix.

Should be a nice machine when you get it all finished.

TomC wrote:I'm not sure if this is of any utility to future users or not, but if someone else finds one and wants to compare measurements, here's my rod Mine's bigger/longer than the other ones I've seen/read about. Cue the cymbals and kick drum.

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Here is the lever from a Rancilio classe 7 leva that I am making some zebra wood parts for, just for reference.