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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 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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3D printing low-quantity replacement parts

By on April 4, 2016 in DIY, Parts

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We receive a lot of requests for parts that we don’t carry because they are too low volume to justify the cost of making molds and of minimum order quantities. In short, we’d lose money on them.

However, we recently purchased a 3D printer for another project and are intrigued with the idea of being able to do small runs of low-quantity parts, to make some of the rarer pieces available again.  There is one material in particular that is a good fit as it has a melting point that is high enough for normal stovetop cooking (and is above that of Bakelite).

We’ve love to offer a download library of parts as well so people can print them themselves if they wish.

While our own rudimentary 3D design skills might get the job done, there are probably much more qualified people out there.

If you are as passionate about Revere Ware as we are, have 3D design skills, and want to contribute to this effort, please contact us.

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The economics of small business: quality, feedback, and ratings

By on March 15, 2016 in Interesting, Parts, RevereWareParts.com, Small business

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In today’s climate of ratings and feedback, small businesses like ours can often suffer at the hands of customers who don’t understand the realities and economics of small businesses, or are simply too lackadaisical to go through the trouble of contacting a seller before they go negative on us.

Take, for example, Amazon.com.  I often order books from third party sellers, and see that most of the time sellers are rated in the low 90’s or high 80’s in terms of overall satisfaction.  On eBay, where I’ve been a buyer and seller for almost 20 years, and have a 100% rating across thousands of transactions, buying from someone with such a low rating seems dangerous.  If someone is rated at 90% satisfaction, does that mean I have a one in ten change of having an issue?  On eBay, where the company forces a resolution process on buyers and sellers, this is often the case.  On eBay, if you want a refund, you have no choice but to go through this process to get your money back.  One person’s bad experience can often be indicative of your likelihood of having a problem.

But on sites like Amazon, where we now do quite a bit of our selling, things are very different, and this leads to a very different quality to their ratings.  Consider the following:

Process: Amazon.com has no process whatsoever that helps buyers and sellers resolve issues.  Have a problem and want your money back?  Sure, no problem, just a few clicks and you are there.  The downside of this is that sellers are often not aware that there is a problem at all.  Looking at returns, there is no way for us to tell that someone returned a part for quality reasons, or simply because they didn’t read the detail and ordered the wrong part.

Quantity vs quality of ratings:  On eBay, which is treated by both buyers and sellers more like a community, people are motivated just as much to leave positive feedback when there is a satisfying experience, as they are to leave negative feedback when there is a bad experience.  On Amazon.com, a very very small percentage of buyers actually leave feedback.  This means that an out-sized percentage of people that leave feedback do so because of a problem (and often a problem they never tried to contact the seller about), which almost guarantees that as a seller, you will find it impossible to have a near 100% positive rating.

Shoot first, ask questions later:  This in my opinion is the single biggest problem with feedback and ratings on Amazon.com.  People simply don’t bother to contact the seller when there is a problem.  Perhaps the norm these days for sellers is that they simply don’t take care of their buyers, and buyers expect poor service.  But for our business, this is anything but the case.  We go to great trouble to try and insure our customers get a good product and have a good experience, and when there are problems, we will do what ever we can to resolve it.  Got a defective part, no problem, we’ll ship you a new one.  Part broke for no good reason a year after you bought it, no problem, we’ll replace it.

That is, we’ll do all that, given the chance.  Most of the time, buyers on Amazon.com will simply return a defective part, leave a negative review, and never ask us for help.

People don’t understand how Fulfillment by Amazon works:  People often leave negative feedback for problems with shipping.  When you order something with Amazon Prime shipping, that means it is fulfilled by Amazon.  People don’t seem to realize that in cases like this, the onus for a good shipping experience is on Amazon, not us; we have no control over shipping.  But we get the negative feedback from shipping issues anyways.

All this mean that it is very very hard for a small seller like us to maintain a good seller rating on Amazon.com.  For example, if 300 people buy something from us on Amazon.com in a month, but only 15 leave feedback:

# negative ratings Seller rating
0 100%
1 93%
2 87%

As you can see, just one or two (undeserved) negative ratings can make us look really bad.  If all of our customers left feedback:

# negative ratings Seller rating
0 100%
1 100%
2 99%

Being a small business means that we can’t provide the kind of product quality that large businesses can offer.  While a large business might have the resources or technology to achieve defect rates like .1% or .05%, we measure ours in the 1-3% range depending on product.  So sometimes a part is simply defective and we don’t catch it before it ships.  But what we lack in big business resources, like many small business, we make up for with great customer service.  We’ll do whatever it takes to fix the problem.

So, I beg of you, when you buy from the marketplace on Amazon.com, give the sellers the benefit of the doubt.  If you have a problem with the product or experience, ask the seller for help.  Give them a chance.  Consider leaving negative feedback only when you’ve exhausted your options and the seller clearly deserves it.

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The economics of small business: why does that part cost so much?

By on March 6, 2016 in Interesting, Parts, RevereWareParts.com, Small business

We occasionally get a complaint from a customer about the cost of some of our parts.  A great example is the hardware set for our single screw handle.

Pan/skillet 1-screw handle hardware set (all sizes)

We charge $2.99 for this part.  Compare this to a standard machine screw, nut, and washer of approximately the same size which you could buy from any hardware store for perhaps 25 cents, or, if you bought a bunch of them together, pennies.

To understand why we charge what we do for a part like this, consider the difference between the standard 8/32 machine screw, washer, and nut you might buy from a hardware store, and our screw, lock washer, and barrel nut.  What hardware you buy from a hardware store is made by the billions.  The principle of economies of scale say that the more of something you make, the cheaper you can make it.

We suffer from the opposite of economies of scale. We make and sell small quantities of something that is not standard and that has to be made specially for our application.  In this case, the barrel nut is not something you can just order; the screw is of a non-standard length.  For each order, we pay quite a lot for the manufacturer to set up and make a run of these parts for us.

If we were to sell tens of thousands of these parts, the set up cost would be spread among many many parts, and be a small part of the cost.  But selling only hundreds or low thousands of these, it comes to dominate the cost of making the part.

So the next time you come across a part you need for a very niche application, to fix a rare appliance, or an old something-or-other, think about how many of these the seller is likely selling and whether it is something you can buy off-the-shelf at any hardware store, and try to understand that the economics of small business sometimes require that we sell at a certain price, or not sell at all.

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Prices, then and now

By on April 4, 2011 in Parts

I recently came across a Revere Ware replacement parts order form from 1950.  I’ve often wondered how our prices compare with what Revere Ware charged for parts back in the Revere Ware heyday, and this price list gave me a good opportunity to compare 1950 prices + inflation with our prices today.

Pan handles were $0.60 for the handle, hardware set, and hanging hook.  The official government inflation statistics (consumer price index) since 1950 peg todays prices at 9.09 times prices in 1950, which mean a replacement handle in 1950 cost $5.45 in 2010 dollars.  We sell them for $9.99.  Given that Revere Ware was a huge company that produced millions of parts per year, it isn’t surprising that they could sell them for less than we do.

But for other parts, the disparity is considerably less:

Replacement gaskets for the vintage 4 quart pressure cookers were $0.75 in 1950, or $6.82 in 2010 dollars.  We sell them for $9.99.

Lid knobs were $0.25 in 1950 or $2.27 in 2010 dollars.  We sell them for $2.99.

Hardware sets were $0.35 in 1950 or $3.18 in 2010 dollars.  We sell them for $2.99.

Not a bad deal.

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1970's era 1574 & 1576 pressure cooker gaskets now available

By on November 24, 2010 in Parts, RevereWareParts.com

We’ve been adding new parts fast and furiously here and the latest addition to our inventory are gaskets for the 1970’s era Revere Ware 1574 and 1576 pressure cookers, which we’ve received quite a few requests for.

1574 4-quart pressure cooker

1576 6-quart pressure cooker

These pressure cookers are characterized by the pressure regulator weight that is similar in shape and size to a Revere Ware lid knob.  You can find the 1574 gasket here and the 1576 gasket here.  These pressure cookers also have a helper handle that is the same as the single screw handle we sell replacements for.

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Small vintage 2-screw replacement handles now available

By on November 10, 2010 in Parts

We’ve been hard at work developing new replacement parts and the latest addition to our catalog is the small-sized handle for the older 2-screw vintage era pots and pans.

As with all our parts, they come with the necessary replacement hardware set, which is also sold separately.  If you are looking for a replacement hardware set only, please note that the small handles require a different set than the medium, large, and x-large 2-screw handles.

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Single screw rivet-style handles now available

By on October 29, 2010 in Parts, RevereWareParts.com

We now have handles for newer style Revere Ware cookware available in our store.  These handles are one-piece with an embedded metal spline and can be further identified by the single rivet or screw holding the handle to the skillet or saucepan.  Some examples of this style of cookware are shown below.

We have all sizes, small, medium, large, and x-large that covers the entire range of copper bottom and tri-ply Revere Ware cookware of this style.  We also sell the replacement hardware (a barrel nut, a screw, and a washer) separately for those that need to fix loose rivets or damaged (rusted or stripped) hardware sets.

While some of these original handles are held on by a screw, most of them are held on by a rivet, which must be removed.  We have detailed instructions on removing the old rivet here.  A drill, a 5/32 drill bit, and a pair of pliers are the required tools.

Note that some newer Revere Ware cookware has somewhat similar one-piece handles that are permanently attached to the pot; there is no way to replace handles on this type of cookware and these handles will not work.

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