Repairing the Fuse on a Coffee Maker

[Paisley]

I thought I'd share some useful information I discovered when I burned out the fuse on my vintage coffee maker this morning.

I have a 1930s Manning-Bowman coffee maker. I plugged it in before adding water to it and it stopped working. I followed the instructions on the bottom for replacing the fuse, but had just one problem: I didn't have another fuse and couldn't locate one anywhere. (Most of the fuses online have to do with blowing things up.)

Then I saw that the fuse had three parts to it: two end pieces and a connector that was rattling around in the bottom. The pieces were originally soldered together, and when the pot got too hot, the connector fell out and shut off the pot. I soldered the fuse back together, and the coffee pot is working again.

You can get soldering supplies at a stained glass hobby shop; some jewelry makers use them, too.

 

[Mav]

I thought I'd share some useful information I discovered when I burned out the fuse on my vintage coffee maker this morning.

I have a 1930s Manning-Bowman coffee maker. I plugged it in before adding water to it and it stopped working. I followed the instructions on the bottom for replacing the fuse, but had just one problem: I didn't have another fuse and couldn't locate one anywhere. (Most of the fuses online have to do with blowing things up.)

Then I saw that the fuse had three parts to it: two end pieces and a connector that was rattling around in the bottom. The pieces were originally soldered together, and when the pot got too hot, the connector fell out and shut off the pot. I soldered the fuse back together, and the coffee pot is working again.

You can get soldering supplies at a stained glass hobby shop; some jewelry makers use them, too.

Uhhhhh.....keep a close eye on that, Paisley. Fuses are generally soldered with a melt- point related to a particular over- amperage. This is sort of like sticking a penny into an older style fuse socket to replace a fuse.

 

[Paisley]

Believe me, I tried to find a replacement fuse.

Two pots of coffee, and no problems so far.

 

[Mav]

Understood. If you're in love with the coffeepot, use it but don't walk away while it's brewing, and dump the finished product into a carafe of some kind when it's done. The pot itself is a potential fire hazard.
What you had is essentially a fusible link that was meant to blow when the current was too high, and it probably used a solder meant to melt at about that point. Whatever you re- soldered it with probably isn't so engineered.
No big deal, just be sure you supervise it. The timing is kind of funny- I just tossed my 20+ year old percolater this a.m. because it started tripping the GFI. Probably a similar shorting problem- I'm just too lazy to repair most electrical appliances.

 

[Paisley]

Definitely. The problem this morning was I plugged in the coffee maker (which I shouldn't have done before pouring in the water) then dropped the stem down the drain, and spent a few minutes cleaning it. (I worked at the Air Force Academy when a huge outbreak of food poisoning occurred; the cause was that someone put a washing hose down the drain and then washed lettuce with it.)

I generally don't leave small appliances on or even plugged in when I'm not around. I had a newer blender that suddenly came on one morning and wouldn't shut off until I unplugged it. So the new one gets unplugged every time I'm finished with it.

 

[Sweatbandjo]

I have a splendid vintage coffee percolator/jug, however there seems to be no maker’s stamp. I want to restore it but don’t know whether the Bottom water reservoir unscrews? Ominously, there is a rattling sound coming from the reservoir and I’ve managed to shake several small pieces of what looks like cooled molten solder out of the steam exit hole. Clearly there is at least one larger blob of solder that won’t shake out.

Does some kind soul please have any knowledge of this type of pot and whether the top normally screws off the bottom reservoir?