Just a brief note to say that COVID restrictions finally fell to a level that permitted our second Repair Cafe in Jersey yesterday. We weren’t massively busy with attendees but it will was great to get back into it.
Repairs (or attempted repairs) included a kettle, toaster, steam iron, a couple of bikes, coffee machine, tape deck (remember those!?), a couple of bits of furniture and a few kids toys.
Most difficult repair was a Nespresso machine, which is the first time I’ve seen oval shaped security screws used. Thankfully we had our trusty iFixit kit (thank you @james for helping arrange this) so managed to get into it but repair proved very tricky. The most rewarding repair was a talking bear who had lost his voice, and with the aid of a few new batteries (and some cleaned up battery terminals) found his voice again. We made a little girl very happy!
Lovely write-up Adam, thanks for sharing. And great pics too!
I have to say, oval shaped security screws are new to me as well - very odd. Glad the kit helped
The story of the talking bear reminds me of the BattCat quest, the results of which we’ve just published. The results suggest that around 68% of broken-but-repairable devices seen at repair events where the issue is battery-related can be fixed by replacing the battery and 1.9% by cleaning the battery contacts:
But that doesn’t say anything about the value of making a kid so happy of course!
An oval shaped screw? I can’t imagine how that would work. Is it listed in the Wiki, or failing that Wikipedia?
Glad to hear that the repair movement has reached the land of my forefathers! (My father was a native.) I had an aunt I used to visit, deceased in the 90’s, who worshipped at the Communicare church and lived the other side of Red Houses. I still have a few relatives there but haven’t been over for too long.
The oval screw isn’t listed in either of those. Apparently it’s unique to coffee machines (both Nespresso and Jura) - it was hard to spot as the oval is very slight - almost imperceptible - it made me wonder why somebody would make a perfect round screw that you could never get any purchase on!
That’s interesting about your connection to Jersey and Communicare. There’s a little hardware store in Red Houses that we send people off to, so they can grab any additional bits we need to repair their item.
If you ever fancy a trip back then you’d be very welcome to come and say hi!
