"Taking One For The Team"

[GHBWNY]

Was scrubbing my 8-gal Tall Boy the other day on the outside and sliced my finger wide open. And I mean WIDE open to the extent that, although I should have gone to the ER for stitches, I manned-out and let it bleed through bandages for 3 days. I didn't notice at the time what part of the kettle had done it. Later, upon closer (and careful) inspection, I found razor-sharp edges on the handle 'plates' where they are welded to the body and even on the underside of the top rim of the kettle. Also, the bottom extrusion is very sharp around the edge. Before my next batch, I'll take some emery cloth and hit all the edges. Brewer beware! You may be next!

 

[ancientmariner52]

It takes seconds to deburr a stamped part in the factory. Shame on them for letting that thing go out the door. No excuse for it. None.

 

[MaxStout]

No excuse for that sloppy (and hazardous!) manufacturing defect, and no excuse for that to pass through a retailer and onto the market. Send an email to the place you bought it from (Northern?). Tell them what happened, just as you told us. Don't expect anything tangible in return, but hopefully, they will write back and perhaps be more diligent in dealing with their supplier. The seller may be unaware of this, and they can't make an effort to improve quality if no one tells them.

 

[passedpawn]

I have this great deburring tool. Makes it so easy to remove burrs from machined edges. The thing must be made of some crazy hard metal, I've deburred tons of stuff and it still works great.

 

[ancientmariner52]

Talking about a file, right? I had one of those, never could figure out how to charge it or turn it on.

 

[MaxStout]

I have one of these. Has a swivel head that allows it to get into tight spots.

 

[passedpawn]

I have one of these. Has a swivel head that allows it to get into tight spots.

That's what I have. Used it a ton over the years. Swivel head allows it to debur holes easily.

 

[JohnSand]

Was scrubbing my 8-gal Tall Boy the other day on the outside and sliced my finger wide open. And I mean WIDE open to the extent that, although I should have gone to the ER for stitches, I manned-out and let it bleed through bandages for 3 days. I didn't notice at the time what part of the kettle had done it. Later, upon closer (and careful) inspection, I found razor-sharp edges on the handle 'plates' where they are welded to the body and even on the underside of the top rim of the kettle. Also, the bottom extrusion is very sharp around the edge. Before my next batch, I'll take some emery cloth and hit all the edges. Brewer beware! You may be next!

Thanks for sharing the information. Sorry about your injury. I hope you can manage to brew one handed. (I have!)

 

[GHBWNY]

I have one of these. Has a swivel head that allows it to get into tight spots.

Thanks for the heads-up on the deburring tool. Gonna put it on my list to Santa.

@MaxStout, I'm going to write to NB about the Tallboy; agree they should be made aware of it. It's a great kettle otherwise. Thanks for the reminder!

 

[ancientmariner52]

While the General Tools deburring tool is perfectly fine, the industry standards are the Noga and Shaviv tools with much larger plastic handles and huge selection of interchangeable blades. For the few pennies difference in price, I'd go with one of the standards.

 

[MaxStout]

Thanks for the heads-up on the deburring tool. Gonna put it on my list to Santa.

It's great for deburring the inside ends of freshly-cut copper tubing. A couple turns and it's nicely chamfered.

 

[GHBWNY]

While the General Tools deburring tool is perfectly fine, the industry standards are the Noga and Shaviv tools with much larger plastic handles and huge selection of interchangeable blades. For the few pennies difference in price, I'd go with one of the standards.

Thanks for the info. Are these tools' blades hard enough to take on stainless? Do you know what material the blade is made of?

 

[ancientmariner52]

We use them daily on stainless, alloy steels, and various aerospace and oilfield materials. They work well for straight edges and inside diameters, not so much on outside diameter. We use deburring wheels on hand held pneumatic die grinders for that. I'm probably the only guy in the plant who still uses files very much.

A word about stainless steel. The 200 and 300 series steels we work with won't harden worth beans. What they are, is tough. Toughness means they can be deformed without breaking, hardness is resistance to penetration. There are many ss alloys that are hardenable, but they don't make pots and pipes out of them.

I don't know what the deburring blades are made of. I'll find out about them, and the deburring wheels I mentioned.

Update: Vargus is another make of deburring tool. The blades are High Speed Steel (HSS), TiN coated HSS, Cobalt HSS, and some exotics we don't need. TiN HSS is most common. Look for goldish color.

The deburring wheels turned out to be called.....um.....deburring wheels
Or unitized wheels. 3M, Norton, Merit, Standard Abrasives, others.

Well, shoot. I was going to insert some wheel label pictures, but it didn't work/don't know how.

More: Just looking on Amazon, those wheels are crazy expensive, $50 and up. Waay up. I've always brought used ones home, with permission of course. Had no idea, sorry if I got anyones hopes up.

 

[MaryB]

Dremel tool, grinding wheel...

 

[GHBWNY]

I wrote to NB about the 8-gal TallBoy kettle and got a quick and nice response from them saying they will "look into it". I've got to find the original invoice so they can identify the lot number. The only recourse I'm hoping for is that no one else gets sliced badly.