Here’s a quick post I’ve been meaning to put up for a while. It describes the “top down” method of lighting a fire in a wood burner. Like my parents before me, I used to light my fire “bottom up”, that is by first setting fire to some small kindling using scrunched-up newspaper (or later … Continue reading A Better Way to Light Your Wood Burner
The Original Kenwood Mixer At the Ideal Home Exhibition of 1950 Kenwood introduced the first of the now iconic Kenwood “Chef” planetary action food mixers, the model A700. Previously in this blog I have written several posts about restoring the A700 Chef, and the 1960 redesign, the A701 Chef. But the A700 wasn’t the first … Continue reading The Kenwood Electric Food Mixer, Model A200
A few years ago I purchased and restored my first vintage Kenwood mixer, a rare model A200 from 1947. This soon led to another restoration, the first of the Kenwood “Chef” model A700 planetary mixers from 1951, followed by another later A700 from the mid 1950’s (mainly because I liked its awesome red Bakelite plastic!). … Continue reading Restoring a Design Icon: The Kenwood Chef Model A701
And how it differs from the “A” model. Author’s Update on A700 Model Nomenclature In this post I refer to this A700 model as a “B” variant, and my earlier restored machine as an “A” variant. This is based solely on information from the Kenwood Chef Restore website as I mention below. Recently this has … Continue reading Restoration of a Kenwood Chef A700 “B” Model
In this post I’ll cover the final finishing and assembly of the mixer. Polishing the Metal and Bakelite Parts Luckily, on this mixer the shiny metal parts, principally the planetary hub, were only dirty and not damaged or scratched. Finishing these was a straightforward process of cleaning/degreasing followed by polishing with a soft cotton buffing wheel … Continue reading Restoring a 1951 Kenwood “Chef” Electric Food Mixer – Part 3
In this part I’ll describe restoring and rebuilding the motor assembly of a Kenwood Chef model A700-A. See part 1 for a description of removing and disassembling the motor. Motor and Electrical Restoration I probably spent more time on repairing and rebuilding the motor and electrics than anything else – the bit you don’t even really see! … Continue reading Restoring a 1951 Kenwood “Chef” Electric Food Mixer – Part 2
Part 1: Disassembly Update: I have had a few requests for the service manual for the A700, which I was finally able to obtain, but only after I had restored the mixers! For those interested, I’ve put a copy of the manual (it’s a PDF in two parts) on Google Drive here I have also … Continue reading Restoring a 1951 Kenwood “Chef” Electric Food Mixer – Part 1
UPDATE: People smarter than me have realised that you do not need to go to the trouble of de-soldering the buzzer – you just need to remove the metal diaphram from the buzzer. See their excellent comments below this post. Stopping a KitchenAid kettle from beeping, at all. My wife and I were recently in … Continue reading De-Beeping a KitchenAid Kettle
A couple of months ago my washing machine, a long serving top loader, finally died. I wasn’t particularly sad, as I’d been thinking about replacing it with a nice new water efficient front loader for a while. And so it was that I ended up buying a Swedish made Asko model W6884 Eco wasing machine. … Continue reading Fixed: One Squeeky Asko W6884 Eco Washing Machine
Combining Coffee and Electronics – An Idea for a Project Having played around with fixed function logic ICs, such as the Johnson counter used in the Spindicator project, I was keen to move on and experiment with programmable microcontrollers. I decided to obtain and play with some PICAXE chips, as they looked like they would provide an … Continue reading Pimp My Rocket (Espresso Machine)
Once Around the Block 