Jim, While I don't speak for Rick, I think if you look very closely at the last photo you will see that the small, thin ,flat, copper contacts ,just to the right of a tiny white ,,triangular shaped,, piece of plastic, are now constantly touching ,at the top of the photo,. Now look at the second photo again and you will see that in that photo the contacts were open. What you have done with the pliers is bend the contact so as to remove the tension that normally seperates these contacts. You do this by pressing them together permanently. A rather simple but ingenious solution to the control problem huh? Hope this helps.
Spiritmaker

Thank YOU Rick for a good idea in th first place!
Spiritmaker

Just an update for anyone reading this post. Spiritmaker and Rick thanks for your insight and help.

I had an 1100 Watt Hot Plate from Wal-Mart that was 1-2 years old and hardly used. I still had the box, it said 1100 Watt.

First I did the modify suggested at the webpage mentioned before. Put on a Pro-Series 2 High Capacity, and 3 hours later, water was still not boiling. Took off column, threw in thermometer in water, and read 80C. Turned off, gave up for the day.

Took apart hot plate, eliminated all controls, and hard wired the whole thing. I figured that would get the plate as hot as possible.

Threw on Stock Pot with about 4 gallons of water. After 50 minutes, it was boiling. After 60 minutes, still no rolling boil.

For me, with my cheap Wal-Mart hot plate - 1100 Watts was not sufficient.

Used Propane. That worked!

I had a similar thing with a burner. I bought a burner from a brewshop and I could not get 5 gallons of wort to boil. I then bought the cheap turkey cookers at walmart and replaced the burners and I now can boil 10 gallons of wort in about 30 minutes. We need to be careful and investigate before buying. I paid top dollar for the burners from the brewshop and in comparison the ones from walmart were now where as expensive.