Leaking Kelly Kettle - Advice please

[Seoras]

I was using my Kelly Kettle at the weekend. It was sitting on the stove (Frontier) and I noticed a ring of water around it.

It is one of the aluminium ones (about 4 years old).

The water is either escaping from a dent in the lip at the base or a hairline fracture near the base. Whatever it is it is very small but the rate the water escapes increases with temperature.

Assuming I can ID which one it is does anyone have any advice on sorting it?

I have considered using some liquid welding stuff I have.

Cheers

George

 

[Nagual]

No idea, but you could try emailing the manufacturers and see what they advise?

 

[Seoras]

Cheers Nagual. Thought about that one but as it is four years old with a fair bit of use that this would be a good place to start.

The fire pot has a number of obvious dents but the Kettle has not.

I will contact them if no one has any thoughts here.

Cheers

George

 

[Peteo]

I would also contact, they may offer to take a look and if not i'm sure they can advise on what is best to repair.

Good luck!

 

[Seoras]

From the FAQ's at Kelly Kettle. Anyone tried these?

If you have an old kettle that has sprung a leak, the following ideas may prove useful:

FDA Heat Resistant, food-contact approved silicons are available to quickly seal leaks at Rivet Points etc., but may not be suitable for sealing a leak at the bottom rim of the kettle where the temperature may exceed 200 Celsius.
We know that many people have used a product called JB weld to fix older kettles.  We have not yet tried it ourselves, but it looks like an option that should be investigated.  The website is here:  http://jbweld.net/products/index.php This may be available in your local hardware store.
We know of a couple of other more unorthodox methods .....e.g.  crack and egg into the water chamber, add water and boil it up.  Once emptied again, a tiny fraction of the egg will have formed a seal within the bottom crimp and cure the leak.   Another one we know of is ground black pepper....swirl it around in a little water a few times ... the small grains will find their way into the tiny leak and help form a seal .... apparently!  Again, we are reliably informed that both of these work.
Finally, a slow leak will not stop the kettle from boiling if you use it without the fire base!
If the kettle leaks, place the kettle on a rock so that the leak will drip and roll down the side of the rock .... away from the fire! Hence the fire will not quench and the kettle will boil quickly as normal.  We use this method regularly ourselves with perfectly good old kettles that we have grown attached to!

 

[Thetillerman71]

You could try using Alumaloy

 

[ged]

The liquid welding stuff is probably something like an epoxy, which isn't very good at very high temperatures but is reasonably stable at the temperature of boiling water. It might well do the job as long as you don't ever let it overheat. If you always have water in the kettle when it's on the heat (as you're supposed to) there shouldn't be any problem.

It could be welded it with TIG or you could solder it. Aluminium is tricky to solder but it can be done. The technique is to coat the area to be tinned with oil, scratch off the surface layer of aluminium oxide under the layer of oil with something sharp, and then solder through the oil. I'd have no worries about using a solder which contained lead for a tiny repair but you can get lead-free solders. I've never soldered aluminium with a lead-free solder so I don't know how well it will perform.

You could try crimping it but I'd have doubts about that.

Another possibility if you have hard water is to just let it boil off enough to block the leak. In my experience it works for small leaks in central heating systems.

I'd try the liquid weld stuff first.

 

[chas brookes]

Hi George
sorry to hear about the leak, a long time ago I had a jet of water coming out the front of my cars radiator. I was just about to go on a trip to cornwall someone recommended JB Weld and when it had cooled down I cleaned the area and put some JB weld on, and topped up rad. The following morning set of cautiously for Cornwall no problems occurred fix was still good a year later when I sold the car
may be worth a go

 

[Seoras]

Cheers guys

I will look into alumaloy and the liquid weld.

I have some JP weld at home.

The alumajoy can be worked with a blowtorch (which I have).

I live in a hard water area so I should be able to try that out this weekend when I get home.

If that does not work I will try the JP weld.

Cheers

George