Sometimes I see the asking prices on some Revere Ware related items on eBay and I just have to shake my head. I’m a pretty enthusiastic Revere Ware fan, but I just don’t see anyone wanting to pay $400 for a somewhat rusty old Revere Ware tea kettle display stand.
Some replacement parts are exceptionally hard to find. Generally anything we don’t make for Revere Ware cookware falls into the somewhat hard to find category. But, given the high number of Revere Ware pieces available for sale on eBay, you can find a lot of cookware pieces to use as a donor for parts you need.
But some items there just aren’t a lot of, like pans with the older style handles.
The bale handle pot is one of those items. The Bakelite part on the bale handle you just can’t find. And there aren’t a lot of them available on eBay. Even if you did find one to use as a donor, they are very nice, and it is hard to imagine sacrificing a good bale handle pot to use the handle on another one.
So I was somewhat surprised to find this on eBay today:
I can see what happened, this bale handle fell off of the pot it was attached to.
Other than spot welding it on again, this isn’t really a replacement bale handle, the the Bakelite part come off and goes on pretty easy. I do happen to have a bale handle pot with a broken handle, so this was a good find for me.
It just goes to show, rare doesn’t mean you can’t ever find one, if you keep trying.
In the earliest days of Revere Ware, the Bakelite handles sandwiched around a metal spline, which showed through all around. The handles had a hollow screw / nut where the handle hook goes, and two screws near the front of the pot, like this:
Around 1947, they changed to the newer variety of handle, the type we sell replacement for.
On the newer style vintage handle, the spline on the largest version of the sauce pans and skillets is 3/4″ wide from top to bottom.
Customer Laurence seems to have come across a skillet that has a different handle.
Note the sharp outer edge and the pour spout. I’ve seen these before but this skillet seems to have a much sharper bottom curve as well.
His handle is a cross between the newer vintage style (where the spline fits in a channel) and the older style, with the hollow screw and nut where the handing hook attaches.
The spline height on this one is 1 inch in width, which I’ve never seen before. You can see from comparing the skillet spline with the example shown above, that it is taller.
It is definitely a unique pan. My working theory is that it is something that they were perhaps experimenting with as they were developing the new handle styles.
Reader Michael found this lid at a thrift store.
Note the hole. I’ve never seen another Revere Ware lid with a hole like that; Michael found two. Given that the holes were in different spots on each lid, and Revere Ware is not known to have put any holes in their lids, these were probably added by a previous owner.
The benefit of having a hole in the lid is it allows for pressure changes inside the pot when there is a boiling liquid, which keeps the lid from rattling on the pot. Pretty useful, really.
