This is where the picture of the damaged latch should be, but I didn't know we were gonna fix it till we started putting it back in. It's shorter arm was mashed in from being forced open while locked. The longer arm still worked when unlocked and sprung back when pushed in. I took it out to find a new one. I took it apart to keep from having to re-key it. It didn't have many parts and only one was broken.
My friend Kevin (a dentist) micro sandblasted the break and the base of the tooth and ran a screw up through the bottom to pull it down into the super glue join.
While supported by a block the pin can be forced out by a nail and pulled loose with pliers.
Once exposed hemostats can free the disk.
Putting it back was as picky as taking it out.
once the liner teeth cleared the dash I was able to get at the screws below the wedges with a short screw driver.
With only the short leg and no back disk in, it's fairly easy to fish the handle in. screwing it down will have wait for the long leg to angle in spring first.
With it laying in place, it was just a matter of getting the long tooth in the correct hole (it only clicks down one way). Then its just counting sponges, screwing everything down,and closing up.
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| ta da |
The Thassos marble disk survived the heating up of the charcoal without bursting, but I did wear saftey glasses that first try. I oiled and heated the frying pans up in the oven with the other pans. I was making a whole batch of cornbread, but when they went back in the oven the frying pans went on the hot marble of the now hard smoking grill.
The gap around the edge of the grill was to allow the smoke up to cook and flavor the corn bread, while the marble was supposed to shield the pans from most of the direct heat.
The frying pan handle was too long to allow the top to close all the way down, but it balanced well enough to not fall off.
I wrapped the whole grill in foil and let it smoke for about 10 minutes (as long as we'd been giving burgers on one side).
At that point I pried the smallest portion up to check the bottom and found it was already a little too dark. Since the big pan was looking barely brown I moved it to the 425 degree F oven where the other pans had already been cooking for 10 minutes and let them all cook for another 15 minutes. I pulled the mini loaves and sticks then the frying pan. It was all great. The skillet cake wasn't very thick, but it was golden on top, and not too dark on the bottom. The hickory smokey taste was surprisingly subtle and definitely worth another go.
