Recently we got a comment from a customer on there order who has been having continuing problems with their mixer:

Here is there comment:  

Is this gear made from butter? Why does it break so easily? This is my third time ordering this gear, is it made of a weaker material?

They ordered a 9706529 KitchenAid 5 & 6 Quart Worm Gear, here was our response and hopefully it will help some of you fix your KitchenAid too!

You placed an order for the worm follower gear (9706529) and were asking what the gear is made of and why it breaks so easily.  I understand this is the third time ordering the gear, I do not show any previous orders through us so I am not sure where you ordered the previous gears or how long they have lasted for you, however here are a few things you might want to check and that might help the gear last longer.

The first thing you will want to do is take each gear out and clean off all of the grease, I find WD-40 and paper towels work really well, once you clean off each gear, carefully inspect each gear to see if you can find any damage on any of the gears.  If you notice a gear is worn, nicked or damaged in any way you need to replace it.  Please do not reuse any of the old grease, small pieces of the metal gears can be left in the grease and that can make the mixer run loudly and strip the gears. Here is a link to the gears:

The next thing to look for after you have inspected each gear carefully would be to check the bearings, thrust washers, snap retainer rings and the pin that holds the worm follower in place, if any of these items are worn or damaged please replace them.  Also be sure to check the transmission cover, in older models these were plastic, if you have a plastic housing, whether it is cracked or not, I would highly recommend replacing it while the mixer is opened up.

When replacing the gears make sure each gear is installed correctly, and coated with the KitchenAid Benalene 930-2 Grease.  Once reassembled make sure mixer sounds good, loud or rough noise indicates that there is still a problem with the gearing.

Lastly, when using your mixer make sure you follow the operating instructions, most importantly would be not to take the mixer over speed 2 when you are kneading heavy dough.

I hope this will help you get & keep your KitchenAid Mixer running.

The Mending Shed

Orem,UT

Lost Letter

Have you ever gotten someone else's mail?  I'm sure most of us have, and that is exactly what happened to us!  Last Monday we were going through our large bundle of mail from over the weekend and in the stack was maybe 1/3 of a torn up letter.

The letter was torn vertically, leaving us only with a return address.  So all the information we had was that the letter was from Elder Nate Harris who is currently on an LDS Mission in New York.  But we did not know who it was intended for, or anything about who this missionary was.  Some of you may be familiar with LDS missionaries (Mormon Missionaries) some may not.  But basically you have young men and women who have decided to dedicate their lives to teach about the LDS church and serve a mission.  Men who serve are gone for 2 years, I cant imagine spending that much time away from my family and friends, so we wanted to reunite this missionary with his letter.  We initially were just going to put the letter in an envelope and send it back to the Missionary so he could forward the letter to whom ever was suppose to receive it.



Hollie, the owner of The Mending Shed, thought about what to do with the letter, Since it was going to a missionary she thought about what her mom would do.  Ellen, Hollie's mom passed away a few years ago, and she loved Missionaries, they were one of her favorite things.  Having raised 2 boys of her own whom served LDS missions themselves, she loved to send care packages to her missionaries.  Anyone who was lucky enough to know Ellen Palmer could tell you what a sweet and caring person she was.  Knowing Ellen would not only return the letter to Elder Harris she would also send a care package, Hollie knew that we had to send this missionary a care package to go along with his torn letter.  Its hard enough being away from your family, and then to have you letter get damaged in transit and not get delivered would be hard both for the sender and the receiver of this letter.  So we got to thinking what fun way we could return this missionaries letter to him, both in Mending Shed style and honoring Ellen's love of missionaries.


So what did we do?  Knowing that we had to act fast as we aren't sure how much longer he would be on his mission or if he was changing locations we got right on our newest project.  We forced each of our employees to divulge what their favorite snack was to us.  After purchasing each snack, we had all of our employees write to our new missionary.  We broke out the 5"x8" index cards and had each employee write whatever they wanted.  We got everything from funny humorous notes to spiritual and uplifting messages for him.  From apologizing if he had an allergy to the nuts we sent him, to instructions on how the snack should be eaten and inspirational, keep your head up messages.



Now it would be weird to receive your torn up, personal letter you sent to someone with just a bunch of snacks and notes and have no idea who these people are that have received your letter.  So we also made sure to send a picture of each of our employees.  We had each employee pose for a photo so Elder Harris could get a really good look at the weirdos his letter was intercepted by, we attached the photos to each note and then to each of our employees favorite snacks.  It was a great way to waste time and not actually work for a while, you know a usual Friday project.  

After we had everything matched up we boxed it all up.  We also typed up a letter to put on the outside explaining what had happened to his letter and why we were sending him this care package.  We really hope this package reaches our dear Elder, and that it brightens his day and gives him a great story to remember from his mission.  Anyone who has been to the Mending Shed can usually tell we like to have fun, and we really hope that Elder Harris thinks we are as awesome as we think we are.   Well, Elder Nate welcome to our family, whether you like it or not... you are one of us now.