Rock And Roll

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yogi
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Re: Rock And Roll

Post by yogi »

The Teflon ban came into effect about 5 years ago, however Teflon is a brand not a chemical. The offending chemical back then was PFOA (polyfloride ... something, or whatever the hell it was). So, DuPont stopped using that and is now making Teflon with PTFE which is perfectly safe for use in cooking if the temps don't exceed 570F. Thus, it is perfectly legal to use the current formula for Teflon in consumer products. There have been stories about defects in babies, but I never read about animals being affected. It's due to the infant mortality that PFOA was banned. Seems like the FDA isn't too concerned about our critters when they make the rules.

I inherited a collection of Anolon pots and pans when my wife turned over the cooking chores to me. They have a lot of weight and my guess is there is a lot of steel in the metal. All of it is non-stick. Non-stick, however, is a myth in my humble opinion. The instructions supplied with Anolon clearly state that the pan temperature should remain under 375F in order to maintain the non-stick quality of the coating. Fair enough for the warning, but no chef can prepare a decent meal at that temperature; well, nothing more complicated than scrambled eggs. Anolon isn't alone in their warnings. I've purchased several pans over the years and they all lose their non-stick qualities after about a year of normal use. This applies to Teflon as well as whatever Anolon uses. I got a ceramic coated fry pan at Target and it did well for a few years. At that point the burnt grease was too embedded into the coating for it to be not sticky. Ceramic coatings seem to last longer than Teflon, but I think the concept of no stick cooking pans is mythological.

Oxolic acid, eh? I'm going to start looking for it tomorrow. However, it sounds like something I might need a background check to purchase. :mrgreen:
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Kellemora
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Re: Rock And Roll

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We've never had luck with non-stick cookware of any kind, which is why we fell back to using cast iron.
If I could have afforded it, I would have bought all Magnalite Cookware. It's a cast aluminum alloy of some kind, much lighter than cast iron, but has about the same cooking properties. I assume it must contain Magnesium hence the name.

If you have a TrueValue hardware store around you, they sell 12oz Wood Bleach for around 7 to 8 bucks.
Else Ace Hardware and Home Depot have it for 9 to 10 bucks, same product, same size.
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yogi
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Re: Rock And Roll

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Google wrote:Magnalite [cookware] is made from aluminum and a special magnesium alloy which is an excellent heat conductor and reacts well to change in temperature, it is "cast as thick as two silver dollars" and "cooks food from all sides-it's like having an oven on top of your range
I can get a 12 piece Magnalite Classic collection of pans for $389 at Bed Bath and Beyond, or pay $285 from Walmart. As far as I can tell they are the same set of cookware. I like the vapor-tight lids, but don't like the 350F limit for using them in an oven. I do a lot of low temperature braising so that it might work, but still it would be nice to have something that won't melt above that temperature

I'm guessing that you are not talking about any of the above. There is a 'vintage' category of magnalite which looks a hella lot sturdier even thought it's used. Also, it seems that magnalite is not a brand name but a type of aluminum casting. There were several brands that claimed the Magnalite tag for their products.

We have a hardware store nearby and I'll check to see what they have. Also have a Home Depot down the street. However, there are some interesting bags of chemicals for sale on the Internet too. The wood bleach looks wimpy compared to the oxalyc acid sold straight up. LOL I know you can't go by pictures but they market the stuff as pure oxalyc acid and wood bleach. I'm thinking it's all the same, but maybe not.
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Re: Rock And Roll

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The bottom of our Magnalite Cookware, at the top of the bottom, bears the name Wagner Ware as a logo using a single large letter W with agner over are, then below the logo it says SIDNEY and under that -0-.
At the bottom in has the Registered Symbol over the script word Magnalite, and under that the number for this particular vessel, which is 4265P.
They sell on eBay for 180 dollars USED.
WalMart has them new for 97.86 each, but they only weigh about half as much as the antique one we own mentioned above.
Without digging out our kitchen cabinets, I know we have two round skillets, a square skillet, a deep soup pot, and I think three regular pots with lids, like 4, 6, & 8 quart probably.
We do know the set we have was probably made in the late 1950's and was stored in a warehouse somewhere.
Wagner merged with another company, and apparently one of the warehouses got lost in shuffle. It was not rediscovered until the Wagner whoever merger was in the process of selling out their brand before going bankrupt.
My first wife and I were married in November 1968, and after our honeymoon in the Ozarks, we had an event to attend in Ohio as part of our honeymoon gift from my brother.
We heard about an auction of world famous cookware and since we had plenty of time we went.
We couldn't afford their large or medium package sets of cookware, so settled for the smaller collection, which was much more than we needed. If I recall correctly, we had about 220 dollars worth of travelers checks left, and after four or five of the small sets sold for much more, the last two sets went for much less. Seems like we paid around 200 bucks for the 20 piece set. They counted the lids, two pot inserts, and a hook as separate pieces, so it was really only an 8 piece set.
Some of the larger 40 and 50 piece sets sold for well over 500 bucks.
At the time, we didn't know why it was fetching such high prices. However, I knew my mom had a roaster she loved, and it got passed on to my youngest sister when mom passed away. I think I would have got it if mom didn't know we bought that set of cookware.
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yogi
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Re: Rock And Roll

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Like a lot of old time goods, I'm thinking the reason the quality has gone to pots ( :mrgreen: ) is because it's too expensive to duplicate the old methods. The technology is still around, but the cost of materials and labor would limit the customer base severely. My mom had a set of Revere Copper bottom pots and pans. She got it because one of the neighbors worked at the Revere factory and got an employee discount. It was amazing stuff to look at and probably equally amazing to use for cooking. Nothing cooks like copper. Cleaning burnt copper was a chore and a half, unless you had the magic cleaner sold by Revere. It looked like kitchen cleanser but had something in it to make the burn marks disappear without an effort. They can still be bought piece by piece on E-Bay, but the price of copper put them out of reach for the ordinary man.
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Re: Rock And Roll

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So true!

Remember the old wood screen doors? Right by the handle they always had a 1/4 circle or in some cases a 1/2 circle, and between the circle and frame were little turned wood dowels. Those doors held up for decades, while the wood ones you buy these days, if they last three to five years you are lucky. I have one on my greenhouse which I've replaced three times now since I built the greenhouse. Never saw wood rot away so fast, even after I treated them before installing them.

I sold all of the nickel lined copper cookware I had, most passed down from grandparents or parents. Had to sell everything I could before moving south to pay off all of my debts first.
There are several things I wish I would have kept, but I did keep enough stuff I felt was important enough to pass on to my son. And if everything goes like it has in the past, he won't be interested in it anyhow.
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yogi
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Re: Rock And Roll

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You can get 1" red oak for $6.25 a board foot, or white oak for $10.75. Either would make a nice screen door frame. Common pine, however, can be had for $3.20 a board foot. Clear pine is $7.10 a board foot. Soooo, red oak or clear pine for that door would be about $130 for the lumber. Common pine would be about $65. I don't know what kind of wood goes into screen doors in 2018, but if you are paying less than $65 for it, you are getting something less than common pine. :confused:

We have sliding screen doors on the deck and patio. They are made of metal and about as heavy as a carton of cigarettes. One is so warped that it's difficult to slide on its track, and we have only been here two years. I haven't priced them yet but I'm expecting the replacement costs to be several hundreds of dollars. And, they are not even made of wood.

I do recall the old screen doors on the house I grew up in. They were made by my dad and his dad. Those doors were wooden, but I don't know what kind. I'm certain they would still be there today if the house was not remodeled. Plus, the screens were metal and not plastic. Come to think of it, those old doors would look very much out of place on this plastic ticky tacky house I live in today. They would last longer than I expect this house to.
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Re: Rock And Roll

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The house I grew up in had the old wooden window screens and doors.
I know the window screen were made of Cypress and had Copper screening.
I remember helping dad swap out the screens for the glass every winter, and storing them in the basement.
All of the gutters and downspouts on the house were copper as well, but varnished to prevent them from turning green.
The copper screens were painted with a thin black paint to make them easier to see through.
The wood screen doors had a heavy spring, and this little black ball on a wire that swung out to stop the doors from slamming.
The lower part of the screen doors had a heavy slat metal grid so you didn't kick the screen out.
About five years before he moved, we had an uncle in the aluminum door and window business.
He replaced all of our heavy wooden glass and screens with aluminum that had both glass and screens that slid up and down. And replaced all the wood screen doors with a heavy aluminum door, also with glass and screens that slid up and down.
They had the closer shock absorbers similar to today's screen doors, but they were huge hydraulic things, similar to what you might find on a schools big heavy doors. They closed a door much more smoothly than today's piston closers when release right at the end to let the door slam enough for the latch to catch.

Before I replaced our exterior doors with metal doors with a large glass Thermopane window in each, the storm doors here were made of steel not aluminum. Not steel covered wood, but steel formed into long boxes like lumber. The bottoms were rusted out a little on all three of them. Fixed with Bondo a couple of times, but rusted out again. Love our new doors, except a man helping me with some yard work broke the out glass in the mandoor for the garage.
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yogi
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Re: Rock And Roll

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Now you are bringing back some very old memories when you mention replacing screens with storm windows for the winter. Those things were very well built by my grandpa and no doubt would survive any winter storm that dared attack them. They were heavy as all get out, even for a young stud as I was back then. Today I can pop the screens out of my windows in less than 5 seconds and easily hold half a dozen of them in one hand. Haven't used or seen a storm window in ages. Now it's all double or triple glazed windows with Low-E glass embedded in their frames. Unfortunately they are not as easy to repair as the grandpa specials. We had two windows repaired in the last house and they leaked terribly. I'm guessing there was no vacuum between the double glazing.
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Re: Rock And Roll

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My house in Creve Coeur had Triple-Track Windows, which predated Thermopane as the most efficient type of window system. There were three sheets of glass each in it's own track. Two of them were only about 1/2 inch apart and the one closest to outside was about 3/4 inch away. You did remove the outside glass and replace it with a screen for the summer, so they had to be stored in the basement, but they were heavy aluminum, not like the flimsy aluminum or cheap steel frames of today. The inside window and second window, although on separate tracks, functioned together when you slid them open side to side.

A few years after I moved down here, I replaced all the windows in this house with Thermopane windows. I had them add extra UV gas to the kitchen window due to the 3pm sun that burned everything, hi hi. You can stand in front of the kitchen sink at 3pm and not feel any heat from the sun, so it worked. I wanted the same thing for the door but they couldn't do it without my replacing the entire door glass which would cost more than I paid for the doors.
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yogi
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Re: Rock And Roll

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It was my understanding that the infrared part of sunlight gave you the heat and the UV part gave you the melanoma. Until I moved into the current house all the windows were double hung. The double glazing did a wonderful job even though there was only about a quarter inch between panes of glass. Even better are the triple glazed windows. I frankly don't recall how modern windows compared to what my grandpa made. I can't say how good the insulation properties were back then, but I do recall the windows rattling when it was windy. :mrgreen:

About two years before I sold my last house we upgraded all the windows and doors to Pella wood windows. I don't recall the exact cost but it was over $20,000. We did not expect to get that back in any way when we sold the house, but the pleasure of living with that kind of workmanship was worth the price. There were some really nice houses in Lake St Louis that had a lot of wood. But all those houses were more than twenty years old. I don't think they use wood anymore than they have to by law when building houses today.
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Re: Rock And Roll

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All of dad's storm windows had a border of felt around the frame, they hooked at the top and when you swung them into place you had to be careful not to ruin the felt strips. We sometimes used a couple of sheets of newspaper as guides on the tighter fitting windows to get them in without damaging the felt strips. One thing for sure, they didn't rattle or make a howl in the wind.
The screens did not have this and they could rattle and sometimes did during a storm.

When he built a fire in the fireplace, we had to crack open the front door, else the draft going up the chimney overpowered the oil furnace flue draft drawing oil smoke into the house.
As always though, an open fireplace could suck the heat out of the rest of the house, which is probably one of the reasons he put the felt on the storm glass to seal it tight. We didn't have a problem with the fireplace sucking heat out of the rest of the house.

I remembered this, and when I lived in a house with a fireplace, I had an outside air in damper placed through the back wall of the firebox. This also allowed me to use a glass front for the fireplace without the vents at the bottom, so no heat was drawn out of the house. Learned real quick we could control how much heat spilled into the room by adjusting the intake damper a little tighter. I played around with a bi-metal coil as a temperature control but never perfected it before we moved from that house up to Creve Coeur. No fireplace, but I did buy a Woodstock Soapstone Stove, loved it!
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yogi
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Re: Rock And Roll

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We learned about the heat loss through fireplaces long ago. When we built the house before this one, there was no provision for a fireplace, but we did have a wood burning stove. I don't recall the brand name but it was awesome. In the fall we could heat 4 1/2 of the 6 rooms with the radiation from that iron stove. It came with a catalytic converter that we ended up not using. It required a lot of heat for it to work properly, which was too much for us to be comfortable. We heard some negative comments about that stove when we where showing the house. That was mostly from people who had children and were concerned about the sharp corners and heat. The stove did get hot, but I don't know if you could do any serious damage to your skin from it. Yet I did understand their concern. The new owners do not have any in house children, but they got rid of the stove anyway. It didn't strike the fancy of the new landlady's eye. I might have considered bringing it here, but we were paying by the pound to transport the furniture. That stove by itself would have doubled the cost.
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Re: Rock And Roll

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We did use our catalytic converter after the stove warmed up. I loved the design of ours, but being soapstone and no sharp corners to speak of, although it held and gave off a lot of heat, about the only place one could get burned was to touch the flue pipe in the back, which was already almost impossible to get to the way we had it semi-built-in.
It had a huge glass front, and was designed in such a way that fresh air blew down the inside of the glass to help keep it clean. Like you, I couldn't afford to move it, but wish I did.
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yogi
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Re: Rock And Roll

Post by yogi »

That old stove of yours sounds pretty interesting. It's a shame you could not transport it. My understanding is that soapstone is like granite, i.e., rock. I had no idea that wood burners were made from rock. I know there are stone ovens for making pizza, for example, but I've not heard of them used for heating a house.
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Re: Rock And Roll

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Here ya go Yogi, I had the model named Keystone.

https://www.woodstove.com/
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yogi
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Re: Rock And Roll

Post by yogi »

It's a beautiful stove, but it looks like it's cast iron. Where is the soapstone? In the combustion chamber?
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Re: Rock And Roll

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Every external part that appears whitish are soapstone panels, and the entire inside is layers of soapstone.
Excellent heat output for what little wood they used.
They are too heavy for even two people to lift, unless they are musclebound weight lifters, hi hi.
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