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Samovar's Anatomy II - The electric samovar. |
Rather than enumerating all the parts of the electric samovar, we just highlight the differences from its smoke-puffing predecessor.
The first -- and most important -- difference is the look and the purpose of the thicker part of the neck: instead of ventholes, you'd find one big electric socket on its perimeter;  In the place of the empty ventilation chamber of the charcoal-burner, the electric samovar has a packed electric compartment.
The most apparent difference, however, is arguably the lack of the characteristic tube. A huge spiral of an electric immersion heater is what occupies the tube's place.
Inside the ventilation chamber, which you can access by unscrewing the nut at the bottom of the samovar, you will find the connections of the heating coil. The coil itself is insulated from the spiral's body (and thus the samovar itself) by a set of ceramic rings. The coil with the white insulator rings resembles the backbone of some fish, if you pull it out of the heater.
In order to unscrew the nut (with a metric M6 thread, in most cases) at the bottom, you will need a metric wrench (usually a 10mm one). The one used for your bike or your car would do. Do not apply your swiss army knife, though. The refined Swiss tool is just not appropriate for the rugged Russian machinery.
The last important distinguishing feature of the electric samovar is the position of the steaming holes; The lack of the tube allows for a more convenient place right at the center of the kamforka.
Some samovars have a special floating device near the heater, which turns the latter off, if the water in the tank does not engulf the spiral entirely. This design, however, did not prove very popular, since it has an additional moving part, which, in turn, constitutes yet another point of failure. Thus, it caused more problems than it solved, so Russians chose to look after the simpler samovars. Generally, Russian technology assumes dumb machines and smart humans, not the other way around.
Don't complain about the missing switch -- just pull the plug, if you want to turn the heating off; the only moving part in a samovar should be the valve of the faucet.
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| To be continued ... |
| source: home.fazekas.hu |
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