Hello dear Coffee Geeks, I have a bit of a grinder dilemma.
Recently, my Rocky has been unable to rotate the grind setting, getting absolutely stuck. If I apply an absurd amount of torque, I can rotate it a few notches in either direction but that is all. It is completely jammed.
So I went about disassembling it... problem is, no mater what I do I cannot remove the top brass plate. I mean this thing is *completely* stuck. It just will not budge. I've even tried removing the housing so I can attempt to unthread it with large channel-lock pliers. It just doesn't budge. It stiffly grinds a few millimeters in either direction, counter or proper clockwise, and this is with a lot of torque applied. I have thought to get a set of long-screws, and screwing them through a block of wood into the brass plate for leverage, but if I can't budge it with channel-lock pliers, what good will that do?
The burrs are not touching, the bottom moves freely with no effort, it ended up getting "stuck" on a very coarse setting (~30-40 notches) What am I doing wrong? Is this thing completely broken, what am I to do?
it sounds like it has been a long time a very long time since the grinder was disassembled and cleaned. I am willing to put money down that you have tar and coffee oil buildup in the threads. be careful what you use to try to turn the burr carrier. You do not want to damage anything.
it is going to make a mess but what you need is a very thin solvent for oil that is food safe.
you might try thinning some dishwashing soap with water until it is very runny. you need to work this down into the threads by applying the solvent on the threads and then moving the carrier back and forth to work this solve it down through the threads. once you can get it starting to turn even a little more then you add more solvent and more working the mechanism back and forth then soon it will be able to be unscrewed
do not use anything that is not food safe. you can not rinse or wash petroleum products out of the pores of the metal to make it safe again if you use a petroleum solvent. when food safe products are manufactured the machines must use a food safe coolant for this very reason. good luck.
In real life, my name is Wayne P.
Feed the newbs, starve the trolls and above all enjoy what you drink!
I suspected it could be that, but it's so miserably stuck I would find it hard to believe.. though I've never taken it apart to see how fine the threads are, so that may be the case.
I'll do as you suggested, and hopefully I can get the thing loose. Also, I hope I have not damaged it in the process. I should have done more research in proper cleaning of the Rocky before I ran into this issue, I just never figured it could come to this. I'll try the food-safe solvent, and if that doesn't work, I'll figure it's a burr or shaving that's managed to thread itself down.
Any grinder that has not been cleaned, will get a disabling amount of tar and oil on the adjustment threads, I see it all the time on used commercial grinders that I get. My daily grinder even had a sticker on it that the prior owner put next to the adjustment knob, saying "DO NOT TOUCH FOR ANY REASON" so the machine was never cleaned nor adjusted and it took a lot of careful work to free up the mech so that I could replace the burrs and get it operating properly again.
In real life, my name is Wayne P.
Feed the newbs, starve the trolls and above all enjoy what you drink!
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