MediumTex Gear Reviews

[gizmo_rat]

Wow, the instructions on this thing are in Japanese and nothing else.

Instructions? Place beans in grinder, turn handle.

Two things:
1) I wish there were numbers on the little coarse/fine adjusting wheel, because even if you find the perfect setting, it will be lost when you take the device apart to wash it.

2) How often do you wash yours, Gizmo_rat? There are all these warnings not to leave grounds or residue in the thing but...grinding tends to produce that. I will probably use it twice a day. I cannot imagine washing it every day. Maybe once a week? It wouldn't be hard to wash, but I never really washed the other one unless brushing counts and hey, I'm already putting in extra time to do the grinding.  Have to save some free time for Linux study.

1) Gently tighten the adjuster until it just stops, loosen back the required number of clicks ( about 2 or 3 for filter / aeropress)

2) I turn it over and tap out the residue, then brush the bottom of the grinder perhaps every fortnight.
I think I've dismantled and washed it once or twice in 3 years,  didn't make any discernible difference to flavour to me so I don't bother.

[dualstow]

heh heh  . While the assembly and cranking are both pretty intuitive even for the less mechanically inclined, I like to have instructions for what Rumsfeld calls the unknown unknowns. Especially with delicate & expensive ceramic parts.

Brush every two weeks, clean every blue moon- sounds good to me! Many thanks!

I used to keep undoing the top to see when the grinding was done, a chore because you usually have to remove the handle first.
Then, duh, I realized that you just have to turn the thing upside down and listen for the sound of whole beans hitting the steel.

Loading is the one thing I'm still doing clumsily. Still working on a good technique.

[Pointedstick]

I am rescinding my review of the Leatherman Wingman multi-tool. Mine just broke today after a year and a half. Where it broke makes perfect sense: there is a metal tab that exerts pressure on a rotating cam; every time you rotate out any of the internally-contained tools, this tab bends slightly to lock them open. This metal piece is hence stressed by every opening and closing cycle; the tab on mine just broke today. I don't blame it. I use this tool literally dozens of times on the average day, so it's been subjected to a lot of wear. Clearly it was never intended to last through that many cycles.

If they had made this tab a spring-loaded lever that rotated around a pin, then the metal would not have been subjected to such stresses and it would have been a spring that was dealing with the forces--the right mechanical component for that job. However, that probably would have increased the price, which makes sense, because mine was about $25.

I'm sure the 25-year warranty would cover this, but what I've encountered is a design limitation that I'll just hit again. I'm replacing it with a Wave, which served me well for many years before I lost it.

If anybody else wants it, they can have it for the price of shipping it back to Leatherman for warranty service  (probably about $5)

[dualstow]

I got a Classic No.2 from Morakniv per Coffee's recommendation and PS's second (Can't wait to put it in a drawer and never use it, but I love it).

Is this gap in the tang normal? I looked through the Amazon comments and a forum, but only learned that this may be a "rat-tail" tang. Is the gap a defect?



Other notes-
- this should meet the max 500 pixels, TennPaGa, if I did it right. I'm an obedient pupil.
- while searching for Coffee's post below, I saw PS's knife sharpening thread and in it, Craig's statement that he made his own knife in a forge. Whoa!

I love, love, love the Mora knives.  They're like paring knives.  Swedish steel.  Rubber handle.  $14 on Amazon.
We just used them to process backyard chickens at a local farm  The knives stay sharp and for the price... such a deal!

http://www.sobertgummer.com/