An Ice Cream Maker is Like a Small Bath Tub...

As you may remember from a previous post, my ice cream maker has been out of commission for a while.  Due to an engineering flaw, I haven't been able to use my awesome White Mountain hand-cranked ice cream freezer.

It tastes better because it's difficult!

The last time I used it, the rotating action of the internal mixer rained aluminum filings down into the ice cream -- forming rich, dark veins of toxic, toxic Aluminum.  

Time passed. I didn't fix it. I figured I'd just eat blizzards. I do live four blocks from a Dairy Queen. Like most of my laziness-driven decisions, this could not last. My family, having recognized that my home was the last stalwart bastion of spectacular awesomeness (and centrally located), decided that my house was the place for our 4th of July festivities.  And because we were having the 4th over at my house, that meant I needed an operational ice cream maker.

Yes.

My mom and my sister want to know when they should show up and what food they should bring. That stuff isn't really in my wheelhouse so I've been putting it off. I'm sure it'll work itself out. But come next Sunday, we're gonna have ice cream.  Here's how I fixed it.

No touching! You can see where the shoulders on top of the thingy at the right have been grinding the area around the hole in the lid. That groove is 1-2 mm deep.

You can see from the picture above that I need to make the lid taller, the mixer shorter, or eliminate friction. Most of my early ideas came from the friction angle, probably because it's impossible. Later, better ideas involved a caulking gun.

It only works if you wear a platypus shirt.

I realized that with the right fix, not only would I defeat my toxic ice cream problem, I would also improve on the design of the machine! What I needed was a gasket. Well, White Mountain doesn't make those. But the hardware store does sell silicone caulk to seal that edge where your bathtub meets the tile.  I figured that would be just the stuff to give me a bit more clearance.

Yep, just like a bathtub.

Victory. It gave me extra clearance AND made for a tighter seal around that edge. I felt pretty smart. And gooey. I'm not good with caulk and probably shouldn't have chosen the living room as my work site.

Well, I tested it... and it worked! I'm super happy. We made strawberry frozen yogurt (which is no vanilla ice cream, no sir) today and everything worked great. We're responsible for bringing dessert to a dinner Wednesday, so I think tomorrow I'll test it out on a proper vanilla recipe.  Yay!