NW JAVA
New member
"I hate it when my tampers get rough and I don't stand them on their base if possible. The roughness can be felt when giving coffee that final polish and sometimes the coffee sticks to the tamper. I also believe that the coffee can slide under the tamper more easily when applying pressure, minimizing voids and less compressed areas of the puck. Time to polish my tampers!
I have 3 main tampers a steel Reg Barber an ordinary steel one and an Aluminium tamper. The Reg has always irritated me because the lathe turning process used to make the base left a fairly poor grooved finish that wasn't very smooth.
I use the compressed felt pads on a Dremmel type high speed hobby drill (mines actually a cheap clone £9.99 product from my local DIY store), or the larger ones for a high speed normal sized hand drill. Use a small amount of a cream type metal polish and polish away, finishing by hand with a cloth and more metal polish.
You will be able to feel the difference immediately and the coffee doesn't drag or stick to the base. The Reg Barber will need a few more "aggressive" polishes before the mirror finish will be achieved, but it's so much better now. I suppose being steel, I could use some 800 grade wet and dry, then the Dremmel type clone and finish off by hand. My other two tampers are now back to a "mirror finish" and working superbly…as can be seen from the before and after shots."
What about polishing the coffee baskets,: Maybe less friction on tamping ?
I have 3 main tampers a steel Reg Barber an ordinary steel one and an Aluminium tamper. The Reg has always irritated me because the lathe turning process used to make the base left a fairly poor grooved finish that wasn't very smooth.
I use the compressed felt pads on a Dremmel type high speed hobby drill (mines actually a cheap clone £9.99 product from my local DIY store), or the larger ones for a high speed normal sized hand drill. Use a small amount of a cream type metal polish and polish away, finishing by hand with a cloth and more metal polish.
You will be able to feel the difference immediately and the coffee doesn't drag or stick to the base. The Reg Barber will need a few more "aggressive" polishes before the mirror finish will be achieved, but it's so much better now. I suppose being steel, I could use some 800 grade wet and dry, then the Dremmel type clone and finish off by hand. My other two tampers are now back to a "mirror finish" and working superbly…as can be seen from the before and after shots."
What about polishing the coffee baskets,: Maybe less friction on tamping ?
