Adding a Philter (sorry) to the Phin

So for my birthday this year I got a Phin, a Vietnamese coffee maker. Phins aren’t new to Roaste, they've been discussed in quite a few blog posts such as those found here, here and here. It's a neat device, but I was having an issue with it.

While I really liked the simplicity of it, I was having an issue with the hole size at the bottom letting too many particles through. Even when I ground on the coarsest setting my grinder gave me I’d finish a cup and have a ton of fines, the bottom of the cup thick. So I stopped using it. Then the other day my hand brushed past my old paper Aeropress filters (that I no longer use now that I have a metal filter) and I had an idea. What if I could add a filter to the the device?

My first idea was to add it inside by cutting a small hole in the middle of the filter and placing it on the screw in the middle of the chamber. This idea...didn’t work so well. Still inadequate filtration. The particles were all just escaping through the hole in the middle.

Then I realized that the saucer part that I assumed was attached, was not. So I was able to simply wet down the filter, place it on the bottom of the chamber (without the saucer part) and then place the saucer part back on the bottom of the chamber, locking the filter in place.

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This worked much better, very few fines and a good cup of coffee. I don’t know that I’ll be replacing my usual method anytime soon with the filtered Phin, but it was fun to figure out a way to address the problem. Do you guys that use a Phin have similar issues? Is it just the grind size that's causing problems?