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When you can’t find a replacement part – buy a donor

By on March 31, 2017 in DIY, Ebay, Parts, Tips

We often get queries for replacement parts not in our catalog.  Unfortunately, it isn’t economical for us to supply every type of part regardless of the amount of demand out there for it.  One option, is to search eBay for new old stock replacement parts.

When that doesn’t work, it isn’t necessarily the end.  Given that there is a very rich marketplace on eBay for Revere Ware cookware, you can very likely find the same piece you are looking for a part for, that is complete, and use it as a donor for the parts you need.

One example of a part that is critical and can no longer be purchased anywhere is the over pressure plug for the vintage pressure cooker.

While this may look like a simple screw, it is not.  IT has a hole in the center filled with solder that will blow out at high pressure.  Once the over pressure plug has been blown out, it must be replaced.

eBay typically has quite a few listings for the vintage pressure cooker.  For example, here is one for $30 shipped.

If you are attached to your vintage piece (as many of us are) this probably isn’t too much to pay to get your pressure cooker functional again, and you’ll get some other extra parts to boot.

So, the next time you can’t find a replacement part, consider buying a used piece as a parts donor.

 

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Revere Ware care

By on March 29, 2017 in Care, Tips

If you’ve got some serious crud on your Revere Ware, see our cleaning guide for some good tips on how to clean them up.

Here is what we used for ongoing maintenance of our Revere Ware.

First, never put your Revere Ware with Bakelite handles in the dishwasher or oven.  The oven can damage Bakelite; even though Bakelite is considered safe up to 350 degrees F, modern ovens can reach higher temperatures in places even when they are set for this maximum temperature.  We’ve heard many complaints to this effect.  Oven use will invalidate our generous replacement policy on manufacturing defects.

Dishwasher use can dull Bakelite over time (see our dishwasher test) and is not recommended.

We often use Scotch Brite pads to clean the inside of the cookware only.  While it will dull stainless steel, the inside of cookware becomes naturally dulled because of metal utensils, so this won’t matter.  Scotch Brite pads do a good job of removing cooked on items, and hard water buildup for pots that are used to boil water.

Don’t use these pads on the outside of your cookware, which you want to remain polished. 

For the copper bottom, we use Wright’s Copper Cream.  It is the closest we’ve found to the original copper paste offered by Revere Ware, and is more readily available.

There are many other natural methods of polishing copper (like baking soda, lemon juice, or ketchup) but we get faster and better results with the copper cream.

For polishing the stainless steel on the outside of the cookware, we use Bar Keepers Friend.  While it won’t necessarily make your cookware look like new, it will add a little shine.

We also like to occasionally use Bar Keepers Friend on the inside.  It won’t make the dulled interior polished again, but, it does seem to smooth the stainless steel out a bit and make food stick less.

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Consumer tip: Big Daddy sponges

By on March 24, 2017 in Tips

A few years ago I discovered the Scrub Daddy sponges.  They are nicely abrasive without scratching the polished stainless steel on the outside of my Revere Ware pans.

The problem is, they are expensive at almost $4 per sponge, and they start falling apart after a couple of weeks of use.  That’s $100 of sponges a year, or about a Spotify subscription.

I recently discovered that the company makes another type of sponge out of the same material – the Big Daddy sponge, which is a giant block.  Now, I slice that block into four pieces, which end up just a tad smaller than the Scrub Daddy smiley face sponges; this brings the cost down to about a buck a sponge.

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Revere Ware 3 quart tea kettle triggers, and other hard-to-find replacement parts

By on March 19, 2017 in Ebay, Parts, Tips

We get a lot of request for parts that we don’t carry – unfortunately, parts for some less popular pieces just don’t have enough volume to justify a production run complete with customer part molds.

One of the most of-requested parts is the trigger for the 3-quart Revere Ware tea kettle.  We’ve talked about 3D-printing them, but unfortunately materials aren’t quite to the point yet where they can handle the high temperatures that cookware require.

For the determined and dilligent, let me introduce you to a new concept – new old stock, which is often shortened in product listings to NOS.  New old stock stands for an item that is no longer in production, but someone found a cache of them somewhere that are still brand new.

For the tea kettle example, here is a small cache of the  (get them while you can, they will go quick), at an incredibly reasonable price.

Over the years, we’ve seen just about every part we’ve needed eventually show up on eBay, and this is how we got most of the samples we’ve used for our production runs.  Here is another part people often ask us about, the percolator and coffee pot handle.

If you are looking for a replacement part, search for it on eBay.  If you don’t find it, try saving the search via the follow this search link in the top of the search results, so that when new matches occur, you’ll get an email.

The search above, for “Revere Ware NOS” is a good place to start if you are looking for replacement parts that we don’t carry.

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The economics of small business: when a business is a passion

By on March 9, 2017 in Interesting, Memorabilia, RevereWareParts.com, Small business

I often wonder why I do some much for this business when it doesn’t always make economic sense.

Not every business is a profit hungry capitalist empire.  Many small business owners are in business because they are really committed to and passionate about what they do.

Pure capitalism demands that you make logical decisions about revenue and profit margins and only enter a line of business or stay in it when it makes enough money.  But many small business owners got into business not because they wanted to make a lot of money (although making money is nice) but because they felt a need to provide a product or service that they felt people really need.

Often, when this is the case, small business owners do a lot more for their business, in terms of time and money, than the typical business might.

Take our business for example.  We started making replacement parts for Revere Ware, well, because we wanted them, and were frustrated that we couldn’t get them.  Without new parts, our perfectly good 60 year old cookware was useless.  We blindly hoped that there were many others out there that felt the same way we did.

And there are.  We’ve not sure how much we’ve contributed to the rise in popularity of vintage Revere Ware, as evidenced by the increasingly growing numbers of Revere Ware cookware for sale on eBay since we started selling our replacement parts, but we’d like to think we’ve helped people get more pleasure and years more use out of their Revere Ware.

But small business isn’t always about good sense or dollars and cents; sometimes it is about becoming a positive force in that which you feel passionate about.  Small business owners who are passionate about their business will often go much farther than other business owners to provide a good product and service for others interested in what their business is about.

To that end, we’ve spent a lot of time doing things like, organizing all the Revere Ware for sale on eBay so you can easily find what you need, painstakingly searching for and scanning vintage instructions and other materials so we can to help you better understand your cookware, providing DIY how-to guides to help you fix your broken cookware, collecting historical materials, recipes, and such, continuing to add more parts to our catalog because people are asking for them, and spending hours answering questions that often have nothing to do with making a sale.

Economically, this business might not make sense.  With day jobs, small children, and a house under construction, making the time to answer questions or deal with negative feedback on Amazon.com is not always easy.  Our time might be better spent elsewhere.

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Issues with Revere Ware lid knobs

By on February 14, 2017 in Uncategorized

Lid knob

Issues with replacing Revere Ware lid knobs are probably the most frequent thing we get asked about, and, much to our frustration, one of the most frequent reasons for returns and negative feedback.  We figure it is helpful to review all the issues and solutions we’ve come across.

Our knobs are made for Revere Ware

First and foremost, the knobs we sell are only for Revere Ware lids.  Revere Ware lids have a screw attached permanently, and thus, don’t need a screw.  We often get negative reviews for not including a screw.  If you want to use our knobs on other cookware, you can, you’ll simply have get a screw yourself from a local hardware store.    You’ll need an 8/32 machine screw made of either brass or stainless steel that is between .25 and .35 inches long.

Revere Ware knobs and screws can rust

Sometimes, a Revere Ware screw can come off the lid.  Usually, this is due to rust.  The screw on a Revere Ware lid is made of stainless steel.  Over the years the Revere Ware original knobs have had various types of metal inserts inside of them with the threads, some of which were aluminum.  Putting dissimilar metals in contact with each other can cause galvanic corrosion, and the with the Revere Ware stainless screws and (mainly) aluminum lid knob nut inserts, this often happens.

When the screw and nut insert rust to each other, rust can often get between the bottom of the screw, where it is welded to the lid, weakening the junction.  Simply trying to unscrew the knob from the lid can break the screw off of the lid, leaving the lid with no screw.  Heating the lid slightly at the point of the knob screw from underneath (such as placing it over a low gas flame) might help loosen a stubborn nut and screw.

If that happens, have no fear, it is an easy fix requiring only a drill and a new screw from your local hardware store.  You can find the instructions here.

Bakelite can deteriorate, leaving the screw insert on the lid

This is the number one issue we have.  Bakelite is brittle by nature, and over time, especially if it has been repeatedly washed in a dishwasher, the nut insert can come loose from the inside of the lid knob and stay attached to the lid.

We have a more extensive blog post describing this problem here.

The solution is to simply grab the insert with some pliers and unscrew it.  In some cases, if the insert and screw are well rusted together, the screw will break off. See the section above on rust; as mentioned above, heating the lid slightly at the point of the knob screw from underneath (such as placing it over a low gas flame) might help loosen a stubborn nut and screw to avoid pulling the screw off the lid.

The new knob can be hard to screw on

Because of the rust issue (see above), a screw can be left with some corrosion on it that can muddy the threads.  Additionally, manufacturing tolerances may have varied over the years such that some screws are just slightly bigger (despite having the same specification).  In both cases, a knob can be hard to screw on.

If you see some corrosion on the screw, spraying a little WD-40 on it will help loosen the rust and allow the new knob to screw on.  If it is just hard to screw on, adding a little oil of any time (one customer used olive oil) will help the knob screw onto the threads.

Occasionally, we do have defects

Lastly, on rare occasions we’ve seen a knob nut insert that simply didn’t have the threads.  If this is the case, we are happy to replace the defective knob, just contact us.  This is pretty rare though; we’ve seen three of these in tens of thousands of knobs sold.

 

 

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Revere Ware detective work – process patent drip coffee pot

By on November 16, 2016 in Uncategorized

We get quite a few questions about the history or age of a particular Revere Ware item. Often, information is thin and it is hard to nail down something like age with any certainty.

Recently, customer Diane asked:

I have stainless steel, copper clad, drip pot that has a patent number of 2272609. Can you tell me the age of this particular piece of Revere Ware?

Based on the work of Charlie Anjard, who compiled the best Revere Ware historical information we have (see history, vintage & process patent, and the photo guide), we know that the process patent stamp identifies cookware that was made between 1939 and 1968.

process patent stamp

We have collected a number of Revere Ware related ads, catalogs, instructions, and brochures over the years.  The earliest piece we could find that showed the drop coffee maker was the Revere’s Guide to Better Cooking, from 1941.

screen-shot-2016-11-16-at-9-14-36-am
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We also have catalogs dated 1953, 1955, 1961, and 1966 that show the drop coffee maker.

In this case, it seems that the piece could have been made anywhere between 1941 and 1966 definitively, and quite possible for the entire period from 1939 to 1968.

One other thing that is notable is that, according to Charlie’s photo guide, Revere stopped making the drop coffee pot in the late 1970’s.  From 1968 through the late 70’s they would have been made without the process patent stamp on the bottom.

 

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World Kitchen unwraps the new Revere Ware site

By on October 20, 2016 in History, Interesting

For a couple of months the revereware.com URL has been shrouded in mystery, with the following message on the site:

revere_website

They recently unveiled their new site.

new_revere_site

They still offer the same limited selection of the classic copper bottom Revere Ware; that hasn’t changed.  They do now show a nice little history of the Revere brand (or perhaps we never noticed that before in their confusing and cluttered site with many brands).

All the hubub seems to be about two new lines they are offering (press release).  The two new lines are the Revere Copper Confidence Core Stainless Steel Cookware and the Revere Clean Pan Hard Anodized Aluminum Non-Stick Cookware.  Both lines include a new feature called Nest&Protect, which looks like this:

revere-nest-protect-example

The hanging hooks for the handles can be hooked over the lower handle to keep the insides of the pots from touching, so as to prevent the outside of the top pot from scratching the inside of the pot it sites inside.

My immediate reaction on this feature is two-pronged:

  • For stainless steel cookware, this isn’t really a problem.  The insides of cookware are going to get scratched and dulled from the likes of acidic food and metal utensils.  And being able to use an abrasive scrubber, like a Scotch Brite pad, is very helpful at times.  I tend to prefer the inside of my cookware to have a uniform dull finish, which is how it always ends up.
  • I am imagining the hassle of always having to unhook those handles to get at the one at the bottom or in the center.

These two lines may be otherwise interesting, but I don’t think Nest&Protect would be a reason for me to buy them.

The other thing that comes to mind is World Kitchen’s long history of producing inferior cookware, opting to lower costs and wring profit by offering a very cheap product while capitalizing on any value left in storied brand names. For example, their picture above of the nested pan cutaways shows very very thin stainless steel on the sides, and, while the bottom does appear to be a bit thicker, I’m not seeing any actual copper in the copper core cookware.

So, I remain a skeptic as to the quality of the new lines.

I was personally hoping that they might improve and expand the classic Revere Ware line they offer, from the very low quality bar it currently meets and the very limited selection.

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