Tamperista Custom Espresso Tampers

Here's a fine tamper of Canxan Negro burl in a design to meet a client's specs: exposed brass weight in the top and a stepped brass base with a supporting collar/ferrule for the handle. The A Leva Elektra style is the Boss in this pairing!

Mission: rescue the roaster trier after the heat from the trier tube done roasted the handle! A (large) chunk of rosewood was perfect, with a brass disc to protect it from the escaping heat. The round shims are of different thicknesses, to allow the roaster to align the flat on the new handle with the trier cup during installation so the sample can be captured and returned to the roaster. The rosewood traveled from Bolivia to my shop in Ithaca, and then to Hawaii, where I'm told the roaster loves not burning her fingers!

(from The Wood Database: The sap from a standing Tambootie tree is highly irritating to the skin. The wood and sawdust has also been reported to cause eye and skin irritation. In extreme cases, there have been reports of blindness resulting from occupational exposure to Tambootie’s sawdust. The smoke generated from burning the wood is also toxic, and has been known to contaminate meats cooked over such firewood, resulting in diarrhea.) Finished work has absolutely no toxicity: no sap, no dust, no smoke, only beauty!!

This energetic trio of tampers is now in the Mission District of San Francisco, where connoisseurs take their espresso seriously! Two of them illustrate a spiralling segmented design, and all three have handle inserts celebrating the history of San Francisco. Music by Dave Brubeck and the peerless Paul Desmond!

These sporty models emerged from a request to create an ultra-light design for a client. The tamper in the top photo is of curly maple with a center section of walnut and black veneer segments, and it weighed in at 151.6 grams! The weight reduction was achieved by replacing my usual brass handle weight with a threaded wooden insert, and by replacing about half of the stainless steel in the base with delrin. The bottom of the base is still stainless, with a threaded boss that extends up through the delrin to the handle. The delrin part is slightly (.004″) smaller in diameter than the bottom of the base, and is slightly tapered toward the top to help prevent vacuum when the tamper is withdrawn from the portafilter basket. The feel is almost frighteningly light, but still balanced. It’s not for everyone, but it is a legit option.

This Art Deco version of a 3D design features maple, purple heart and bloodwood between rings of African blackwood. The drawing gathered dust for a year, but once I had made the block of opposing bias purple heart layers, it only took me another year to finish it. The music is from The Duke Ellington Orchestra.

Here’s a tamper of ipe wood with maple veneers and bloodwood diamonds. The Sanibel seashell has a name, but I can’t remember it! Ipe is a dry, splintery wood to work with, and it really liked the tung oil for the first 13 coats before it started to glow a little. The reward is tons of chatoyance and a wonderful texture in the hand. The base is tapered from 58.4 mm at the bottom, made of heat treated 416 stainless alloy.

This is from a local curly black cherry board with lots of gum lines in the grain, and I’ve almost used all of it; I’ll miss seeing it in the wood room. I added a pearly white seashell in the top of the handle set into an enameled aluminum cup with a thin ring of African blackwood around it, and some subtle engine turning on the top of the tapered 58.35 mm base. Then I figured I’d better quit messing with it.

This tamper features a Shimano 14-tooth cog robbed from an old cassette. The cog was annealed, then modified on the lathe by grinding the outside diameter of the teeth to a uniform circle and machining off the center hub boss before mounting it on the tamper base. The encapsulating resin creates a surprising illusion: you expect your fingers to contact the teeth of the cog! The handle is of claro walnut, and the music is by Albert Collins.

This design features an encapsulated RS11 roller chain to recognize the passion for cycling shared by baristas and their cafe clients! The wood is Brazilian tulip with decorative veneers, and the music: Willie P. Bennett.

It always makes me happy to design musician-themed tampers! This is a D’Addario Phosphor Bronze 6th string, embedded into the top of a 416ht alloy tapered base with 58.5 mm bottom flange. The string fills out the top of the portafilter basket when tamping to give alignment feedback, but still lets air in when withdrawn to prevent puck suck! The wood is ziricote, and the music is by Pat Donohue.

This is the “Sam and Dave” model R&B tamper; it will be shared by two baristas who work in the same shop. The grain match was somewhat of a stab to align that of a piece of cherry on top with a piece of bubinga on the bottom, both quarter-sawn and with similar growth ring width. The bubinga was turned to a dowel and tenoned fully into the cherry, and the joined pair was returned to the lathe to discover how the rings would line up after shaping. I call it a round scarf joint.

Aaand finally, this tamper of wormy coffee wood from Cordoba, Mexico is finished. I decided to embrace the worm holes, and the cracks, and to warm it up with Imbuia and Maple. There were sessions at the desktop mill, followed by other sessions at the desktop mill. I’m told that the tree was over 100 yrs old, but that may have included many years of waiting for a purpose after it was removed from the plantation.

I call this the wood room, although it’s really just a space behind a huge brick chimney foundation that I wish were gone from my basement shop. There are over 130 wood species here, and all but about 20 can be identified, kinda. The third photo shows a wheeled rack that I have to move from side to side to access the wall racks, and which added about 30% more storage space to the “room”. I’ve made tampers from about a third of the species, and all those other possibilities make me wake up excited every day! This collection came from junk shops, estate sales, shady parking-lot wood dealers, the firewood pile, or fancy wood shops that I frequent whenever I’m out traveling. I have to humidify in the winter and dehumidify in the summer to keep the wood more or less happy, and it stays between 62-68 degrees and 33-45% humidity: nice working conditions!

I’d be glad to give it a go! Email me: [email protected]   Thanks!

The origin of the Zelda Triforce symbol isn’t easy to trace, but I have it on good authority that it’s more ancient than video games. At any rate, here it is in all the glory of purple heart and yellow heart! This design is for a barista in Buffalo, NY, and the penny in the top has special significance. Photo 3 is the setup I use to run small sections of endgrain wood through the sharp planer. The thickness of the contrasting woods must be the same if the four small triangles are to join into one precise triangle, ready for the veneer wrap. Photo 7 shows the contrasting concentric circles in the top, ready to install the insert, pour the resin, and put it in the vacuum chamber. It was fun to make, and I wouldn’t want to cross anyone who can control it’s power!  I would, however, drink the cappucino it creates!

I finally made a base befitting this lovely Imbuia tamper handle with exposed brass weight. Without the brass accent ring inserted just outside of the handle seat in the base, I thought it looked like an aristocrat in pauper’s shoes. The accents in the handle are narra with red and black veneers, and the inner warmth of the imbuia is intense!