My Old Kettle Leaks!

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 successfully used a product called 'JB weld' to fix older kettles (www.jbweld.com).  We have not yet tried it ourselves, but following method has worked well for some customers:

1. Clean off the seam area with a good rubbing with steel wool or light sand paper.  Wipe off the seam area with alcohol (or other solvent) to make sure it is thoroughly clean.
2. Make sure the seam does not contain any water. Dry it out by letting it sit open on a window sill that gets bright sun for a week, cook it at low heat on the stove or bake it in the oven at low heat
3. Put a bead of well mixed JB Weld epoxy on the seam.  Force the epoxy into the seam by firmly dragging your finger over the seam as you rotate the kettle.  Let the epoxy cure for a couple of days ..or to make extra sure...follow steps 4-6 below:
4. Seal up the kettle by placing the stopper/cork firmly into the kettle opening - sealing the water chamber.
5. Make the kettle cold by putting it in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes.  Cooling the sealed up kettle right after you apply the epoxy will cause the air in the kettle to contract and should help suck epoxy into the leak area. >Remove the kettle from the cold environment and immediately pull the stopper/cork out of the opening.
6. Let the epoxy cure for a day or two.

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.

It is sometimes possible to tighten a leaking bottom seal of a kettle with vice-grips.

Note: It is extremelt difficult to weld Steel and virtually impossible to weld thin Aluminium.

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!