Dackz said:
What do you use to clean the little bits of abv off the screen on the elbow?? The little glass pick doesnt work and neither does my wooden little scooper. Should I clean it with anything to make it work so it doesnt stick as much?
I've found the best tool for quickly clearing debris out of the elbow "cup" screen is a simple artist brush. I use a common/cheap, round, thin diameter, medium/fine coarseness, synthetic, short and tapered edge brush type - only because this is what I had laying around. Easily clears the screen with a few pokes, swipes and a quick blow in the opposite direction of normal flow. If the cup screen has been used very heavily then the debris can obviously stick to the brush hairs but are easily removed. However, if the screen is fairly clean the debris simply dislodges and is easily dumped out. The brush also works great for clearing any fine debris that falls through the Cyclones main flat screen and ultimately ends up stubbornly stuck to the heater screen.
Obviously, using any type of brush to dislodge debris should ONLY be done on a COOLED part!!!
Of course - Using any type of brush on hot parts could actually cause the brush hairs to easily melt/burn onto the very part you are trying to clean - requiring you to now throw the part away for safety/health reasons/concerns and thus forcing you to go purchase a replacement part. I wouldn't even consider trying to clean and reuse a screen with just a small amount of melted plastic/synthetic or natural (horse?) hair even possibly adhered to it.
While I'm at it ............
I don't know if this has ever been mentioned here before...... I've recently found a neat little device that allows lightning fast loading of a warmed up Cyclone bowl while its still mounted in place over the heater - yet totally prevents any spillage falling directly into the unit if one should (as I often did) slightly miss some of the loading "target" area. It's called a "powder funnel" and is normally used for ammo reloading or lab use. They are available in many sizes and materials. The best one I found is made of lab glass, has a large mouth opening at the funnels top (providing a fairly large and almost impossible to miss loading "target"), has a sharply angled funnel taper/cone forcing everything dropped in to quickly fall through the funnel right into the Cyclone bowl and has a ground glass male taper bottom fitting (which is the exact same size as the glass elbow that normally occupies this place). This provides not only a perfect fit, but also (and much more importantly) a large bottom opening for material to easily fall through into the Cyclone without requiring manual assistance. If anything does manage to stick to the inside wall of the funnel (likely due to some finely ground material dust and a slight static electric charge on the glass funnel walls) - I simply use my artist brush once again to swipe the particles down the funnel. Super easy, quick and very convenient loading while virtually eliminating any chance of spillage or unintentional debris falling into the top opening and down into the main unit itself.
Before this current funnel - I purchased a small, very cheap, short stem lab glass funnel on ebay. This funnel worked "OK" but always required manual assistance to get the material down through the small funnel bottom stem. Luckily the glass stirrer/poker fit nicely but it was always a pita.
I have some other tips/techniques/adaptations I personally found to work quite nicely on the Q (useful when using bags as I mostly do) that I haven't seen mentioned - some address obvious shortcomings like "bag blowback" when a bag gets full unnoticed or the silly need to hold your finger (or use another blocking method) over the bags feed/release tube ...... using both one way and dual direction glass valves . Gotta run now, so perhaps I'll post them in another novel length post the next time I log on FC.
). If anyone knows if I can get a battery tray that works with that remote it'd be much appreciated, thanks!
But why a coffee pot? Seems like I'd get tennis elbow or something getting it out.
