Thread: New Handle

I recently broke, by overheating, the plastic handle on one of my stovetop espresso coffee pots. It occured to me that I could easily replace this with a more attractive timber handle.

That was my first mistake: Thinking that it would be easy. I keep small pieces of wood especially for things such as this and dug out a piece of suitable spotted gum. I traced the outline from the original handle, cut it with a jig saw and deliberately orientated the grain so it ran down the length of the handle.

I shaped a small tongue to fit into the aluminium housing of the coffee pot. As it was going through the fitting stage I broke the tongue of and I realised that at about 6mm thick the tongue with a vertical grain was never going to be strong enough.

So I found another piece of timber from the off-cuts bin. This time it was ironbark, which I ran with the grain in the opposite direction. As you can see from the pix, this time it broke across the handle.

I am by this stage starting to become agitated. I could have bought a whole new pot for between $10 - $20!

But you know how it is, it had become an issue which I had to resolve. It seemed like I would have to make it of metal or plywood. Metal wasn't really an option because of the heat conduction and plywood is, well, plywood and unattractive.

Then I thought about laminating three pieces of ironbark with the centre piece having the grain horizontal and the two outside cheeks at right angles just like plywood in fact.

You can see the result. Problem solved.

Regards
Paul