From this, to this.......

Step 1: Bad Design

Had a quick little project today; We have a stove top milk frother, which is basically a stainless steel jug with a thing a bit like a french press that goes inside, you heat your milk on the stove in the jug, and then aerate it with the plunger, to give you a poor mans cappuccino.

We have a couple of these, but this one has been bad from the start, the handle is a closed D, affixed at the top and bottom, so when you put it on a gas ring, the flame goes up the side and sets fire to the handle, filling the kitchen with acrid smoke. Not good.

So I finally got around to making a new handle for it.

Materials;

Broken Milk Frother

Bit of old Sycamore chopping board

Tools;

Tablesaw

Bandsaw

Drill

Chisel

Sandpaper

Gorilla Glue

Step 2: Wood Butchery

Firstly I got an old Sycamore offcut I had in my workshop, I have a bunch of these I made butchers blocks out of a few years ago, and I cut it down on the Table saw to approximately the same width and size of the old handle.

Step 3: Can You Handle It?

Next I drew my handle shape on the block, this time making it an open bottomed handle to keep it away from the flames, this is how our other frother is designed.

Then cut it out roughly on the bandsaw.

Step 4: Shaping Up

After I'd roughly cut the shape on the Bandsaw, it was just a case of sanding and shaping, until I was happy with the feel of it.

Step 5: Round Hole, Square Hole

Once I was happy with the shape and finish of the handle, I had to work out how to fix it to the Jug. The original handle had small slots in the top and bottom part of the D, which matched up with Tabs welded to the jug, and were fixed with machine screws through the handle.

I couldn't think of a quick and easy way to make a slot, so I measured the Tab, which was just over 9mm, drilled a 9mm hole in the part of the handle I wanted to fix to the jug, and then squared it off with a chisel.

I then measured where the hole for the fixing screw needed to be and drilled and countersunk a corresponding hole in the handle.

After which I gave it a final sand and a coat of Wax finish varnish.

Step 6: Gorilla Grip

When I came to the final fitting of the handle, I didn't feel that it was solid enough, because the tab had a bit of space in the square hole to twist, so before fitting I used some Gorilla Glue in the Hole. This is an expanding, gap filing glue, which took up all the space in the square hole, and made for a nice tight fit, I just had to mask off the jug, because the glue gets everywhere when it expands.