The Elbow-Sealed Kettle Funnel: A Filling Pipe That Keeps Its Own Water Seal

"A funnel, comprising a vertical funnel pipe 4 which terminates at its upper end in a funnel head 5, and has an elbow in its lower part to provide an oblique, forwardly extending outlet pipe 6, which extends upwardly and forwardly toward the spout of the tea kettle at an angle of about forty-five degrees with respect to said pipe 4, fits in said kettle." "Owing to the pipe 6 being upwardly inclined there is formed at the lower end of the pipe 4 an elbow, which will at all times hold sufficient water to seal the lower end of the filling pipe and prevent the steam escaping upwardly therethrough."

**Head.** Cut a clean tin can down to a cup 4 cm deep that drops into the kettle's mouth. Cut a ring from a second can's lid, 1 cm wider all round than the mouth, and solder it round the cup's top as the flange that rests on the mouth. Drill a hole in the cup's floor to take 10 mm copper tube. **Pipe.** Cut copper tube long enough to reach from the cup to 2 cm above the kettle's floor, plus 4 cm. Bend the last 4 cm up by hand, slowly, round a jar, to 45 degrees from the pipe. Clean the pipe's top and the hole with steel wool, flux them, push the pipe through the cup's floor, and solder it with the torch and lead-free plumbing solder. Wash off the flux. **Lid.** Cut a disc from a can lid that sits inside the cup's rim. **Test.** Seat the funnel in the kettle's mouth with the outlet toward the spout. Fill through the funnel, noting how fast it runs, put the lid on, and bring the kettle to the boil with only a little water in it. Hold a cold spoon over the funnel's lid and another over the spout and see which one mists.

**Winner C. Belcher** of Colfax, Placer County, California, filed US 873,653 on 25 March 1907; it was patented 10 December 1907. The funnel head 5 is preferably a basin with an outward annular flange 7 and a slanting bottom 8, and its mouth is closed by a lid 9 fitted in it. The funnel need only be taken out to clean the kettle. His claim covers a kettle with a mouth and spout, a funnel removably seated in the mouth by an outturned flange, a vertical tube ending near the bottom in an upwardly inclined outlet opening toward the spout, wholly open and unobstructed, and a cover for the funnel's mouth. **Honest limits.** A tin-can head with a flat floor stands in for his basin with a slanting bottom. The notebook treats the seal as the rise of a straight outlet; its lengths and angles are examples. What your spoons show is the result.