# Restoring ancient La Pavoni



## BigBadWolf (Sep 28, 2014)

Hello everyone! I've just received an ancient model of the La Pavoni Professional (looks like full-brass exterior, with lots of greenish and/or white corrosion) which is in terrible condition. I've looked for videos of de-scaling old, unused machines, but none of them even closely resemble what I see in my La Pavoni.

If anyone knows, can you tell me if the La Pavoni's boiler was always made from nickel-plated brass, and is it safe to use citric acid on all models?

The residue in the boiler is a pile of light brown, 2mm thick material, that looks a lot like calcium deposits, just.. brown.

Now, I know that the boiler supposedly is nickel-plated brass, but neither nickel nor brass corrode light-brown, and calcium, to my knowledge, is white.

I emptied the whole boiler into a big bowl, and the bowl was almost filled to the top with brown stuff. The brown stuff does dissolve in citric acid, I guess that's the good news.

I got it for ~100 pounds from ebay, and nothing seems to be corroded to the extent of it being broken.

I've bought insanely cheap la Pavonis from ebay before, and restored them without a lot of trouble, but this thing looks like it's from another world.

Before I start restoring it, please, give me all your input and experiences with old machines. I do not want to destroy the poor thing.


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## coffeechap (Apr 5, 2012)

The brown stuff is scale deposits built up over a long time, citric acid will do the job of descaling but take you time with it, the exterior can be stripped back and carefully re polished to bring it up to its former glory, I am restoring the same version at the moment.


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## BigBadWolf (Sep 28, 2014)

Thank you, I figured it has to be deposits, but it looks so.. extreme.

As to the repolishing, do you remove all of the old coating and do everything new?


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## Richard Penny (Nov 14, 2014)

On my "Used pre millennium la pavoni" thread from a few months back, trgreig posted a photo of brown scaled internals. He'd probably have some good advice for you. Good luck!


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