09:07 – Long-time reader Mikeric sent me email with a question about #10 cans: “I am curious about how you open them. I have spotty luck with can openers.”
Good question, and one that many preppers never think about because they don’t realize it can be an issue. The problem with #10 cans is two-fold: first, they’re tall enough to make it difficult or impossible to use a standard counter-top can opener, electric or manual. Second, the lid on #10 cans may be recessed deeply enough from the rim that some can openers may just spin the can around without the cutter blade coming into contact with the lid itself.
For emergency use, the best bet is military P-51 and/or P-38 can openers. The P-51’s and the slightly smaller P-38’s are cheap, fast, and effective (once you figure out how to use them). If you depend on canned goods in your food storage, you’ll want to have a bunch of them scattered around so you’re never lacking a can opener. As a matter of fact, I just added a 20-pack (ten of each, P-51 and P-38) to my Amazon cart. That’s 20 US-made, military-issue, Shelby can openers for about $9. You’ll want at least one in each of your emergency kits, plus several more scattered around your kitchen and food storage areas.
For daily use, you’ll want a normal can opener or openers. We threw out our electric can opener years ago. It worked only with normal size cans, didn’t work when the power was down, and was difficult to keep clean. Our main can opener now is an Oxo safety can opener that Barbara got at Bed, Bath, and Beyond.
We also have a couple of standard manual can openers, of the sort that Swing-A-Way pioneered in the late 1930’s. Swing-A-Way can openers made prior to about 10 or 15 years ago are just about bullet-proof and can open any standard or institutional size can. They’re still sold for $5 or $6 apiece, but unfortunately they’re now made in China and are reportedly now typical shoddy Chinese junk. There’s a US-made version sold under the name EZ-Duz-It, which reviews say is as good as the original Swing-A-Way openers, but I haven’t seen one of those.
Finally, if you find yourself without any tools at all, you can open a can by pressing it against any concrete surface and turning the can until you’ve ground down the rim.
More science kit stuff today, as usual.
You can also open a can with a chef’s knife. It’s not great for the blade, but not terrible for it. A decent quality knife’s steel is so much harder than a can’s metal that you don’t lose much edge — I know from experience.*
However, RBT is right. P-38/P-51 are so cheap and effective that it’s foolish not to have a bundle of them on hand.
* I hadn’t heard of the “rotate the can on concrete” trick at the time.
I just placed the order for 20 P-51/P-38 openers with Amazon, and I’m worried. The vendor they listed on the product page is not the same vendor as was listed in the cart. The one on the product page was AJ Veterans Supply, from whom I’ve gotten these before. The vendor listed on the checkout page was HobbyToolSupply, which I know nothing about.
Amazon-fulfilled products are now completely hit-or-miss. I may get actual US-made Shelby product from this other vendor, or I may get Chinese junk. Amazon’s dirty little secret is that they now dump same/similar products from different vendors into a common pile, and then fulfill orders for different resellers out of that common pile. Vendor A may send Amazon a bunch of genuine product, while Vendor B may send them a bunch of counterfeit junk. But Amazon fulfills orders from the common pile, so no matter which vendor is supposedly providing the product, you may get genuine or counterfeit. This really sucks, and I’ve complained to Amazon about it but got no response. It’s also probably what’s mainly responsible for some products getting a bunch of 5-star reviews AND a bunch of 1-star reviews. The former received genuine product and the latter counterfeit Chinese junk.
We’ll see what happens. If I get junk, I’ll return it and make it clear why I’m returning it. Fortunately, a genuine Shelby product is pretty easy to distinguish from Chinese junk, although I suspect a lot of buyers never make the connection.
Apropos not much, I’ve tried to persuade my wife and Son#1 that everything from China is junk. They are highly resistant to my suggestion.
I’ve also tried to persuade my wife to get “Made in China” tattooed on the bottom of one of her feet. She’s not going for that, either.
China does actually produce some decent-quality stuff, but only in factories where the non-Chinese company keeps a very close eye on QC. Apparently, it’s part of Chinese culture to get away with as much as possible. The only way to get a Chinese factory to produce quality items is to watch every detail every second.
The thing that makes me think twice about Amazon is the 256GB micro SD card that they have listed for sale at less than $20, when a legit Samsung one is $200.
I think Amazon is making a huge mistake by commingling products. They’ve basically turned shopping there into buying a pig in a poke.
Yes, but according to my wife that’s because of the Communists, not because of traditional culture. That could be; “getting away with as much as possible” is a part of every Commie society that I know of, and what I saw in Russia suggests that the taint remains even after the Communism officially goes away.
re Amazon, I assume they’re testing how much they can get away with. They’ve become a near monopoly, so now it’s time to make a profit from it.
We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.
Restaurants have a special can opener for #10 cans. It bolts to the worktop, slides up and down, and spears into the can. The can sits on the worktop.
Headed out to see some sights…
nick
WRT Amazon, I am a frequent shopper and am well aware of the shopping cart vendor switcheroo that sometimes occurs (I have complained too and returned products). Unfortunately Jeff Bezos is a card-carrying progressive/liberal/communist. He got to the top with good old fashion capitalism and now wants to prevent anyone else from doing the same.
The real answer is to make it cost them money by returned goods that are not as represented.
I put celo-tape around a P51 and carry it on my keyring. I also carry a Leatherman with can opener as much as possible. I also have the OXO opener and use it most of the time. Standard crank can opener as a backup.
I return stuff to Amazon all the time. Mostly because it doesn’t match the online description, some DOA. I use Amazon Lockers now since one is 1/2 mile from the house.
“The real answer is to make it cost them money by returned goods that are not as represented.”
And to publicize their chicanery and outright fraud at every opportunity. Including, but not limited to, their own reviews.
Why is it that when companies and corporations and nonprofits finally reach pinnacles of financial success that they start getting cheap and fraudulent and greedy? Mrs. OFD’s employers were on shaky ground when she started with them seven years ago and now that they’re raking in the contracts and the dough, and have about five times as many independent contractors like her doing it for them, they’ve become, dare I say it, niggardly and cheap with expenses, late all the time with paying her, and never giving back the grand a week that they cut from her six years ago, or even recognizing her “senior” status and wealth of experience. Their attitude is, “lots of people are waiting behind you and would love to have that job” which is bullshit.
Also, since they’re based on K Street in Mordor their day to day office staff leave a lot to be desired and can barely understand English. But this doesn’t faze them and it’s basically absentee management now for years, that are always hard to reach, always out sick, out for surgery, out at a “retreat,” on vacation, etc., etc. And the clueless PR crone at the top of the heap rakes in over $600k for herself.
I tend to think Mr. Chuck was right about Murkan corporations: the more they make the greedier and nastier and cheaper they get; a zillion is not enough; it has to be a zillion every second. And if it means destroying smaller companies and businesses, lying to customers, producing shoddier goods and services, and sucking up to government for preferences, so be it.
Here’s the type of can opener that nick flandrey mentioned. This one is all stainless, easy to clean, and you can get parts kits for it. The cutting points don’t last forever, but they are built for lots of daily use in a commercial setting. If you’re serious about feeding a medium sized group of people, it might be worth the investment.
http://www.centralrestaurant.com/Franklin-Machine-Products-198-1089—Manual-Can-Opener-By-Edlund-All-Stainless-Steel-c83p53327.html
Even LL Bean went down the drain. Thirty years ago, even 20, I used to buy a lot of stuff from them. But they gradually went from all US-made stuff to almost all cheap foreign imports, and their formerly great returns policy has pretty much disappeared.
I remember, probably 30 years ago, calling LL Bean support. I had a hardware item, I forget what it was, that’s I’d bought from them probably 10 years before. It had worn out and broken, and I actually called to buy a new one. The woman I was about to order one was chatting about the product with me, and when she realized that I already had one that had broken she offered to transfer me to customer service to get a free replacement. I told her that I wasn’t expecting a free replacement because tools do wear out, but she insisted that I was entitled to a replacement at no charge. Which they shipped to me without even asking for the old one back.
Several years ago, I had a pair of LL Bean boots that I hadn’t even gotten around to wearing for the first time. They were sitting in the closet in the original box, unopened, for a couple years. When I finally decided to wear them, I opened the box and found that the rubber-like soles had basically rotted. They were sticky and obviously defective. When Barbara called LL Bean customer support, they told her that they no longer carried that product. The closest product they had was IIRC $140, and they offered Barbara a 25% discount. She went ahead and ordered them, but that’s the last thing I’ve ordered from LL Bean.
I’ve seen those commercial-grade can openers before, but I can’t imagine any situation in which I’d pay $700 for a can opener. A $15 US-made Ez-Duz-It opener would last decades even if we were opening a dozen cans a day. Just to be safe, I’d keep a couple of the $15 openers on hand, but that’s about all I’m willing to pay for can openers.
The best can opener I’ve found for a reasonable price is this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001E05WQM/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
It is almost as good as the one Nick Flandry mentioned.
Dave, this is in no way meant as a criticism of your wife, but she has not left that company. Since they are able to screw her over on expenses and late pay and everything, and she continues to put up with it, why should they change?
That’s looking at it from a cold bottom line perspective, or a greedy-capitalist-screw-everyone-possible perspective if you prefer. It has nothing to do with the corporation being “a good citizen” (a concept I don’t acknowledge) or the managers being decent human beings. Decency in management should never be expected, especially given the number of incentives against it.
Dave, this is in no way meant as a criticism of your wife, but she has not left that company.
When MrsAtoz retired and started out speaking, the gigs were free and up to $500. I still had two years left in the mil, so we were making it. It would have been tough if I wasn’t drawing o-5 + flight pay at the time.
After a couple of years getting dicked over by Speaker Bureaus, she incorporated and said screw them. They were charging clients double what her going rate was, raking in the dough for 30 minutes work. We tell all our clients to spread the word to call us direct. She started making so much I said “Hell, I’ll retire and work for you” the rest is history.
It’s hard starting out with no money coming in, but still form a corp for what Mrs. OFD does and start looking for your own work. Keep it on the sly until you build up a clientele. I know you guys are up there in age, but what have you got to lose. Most of us will have to work into our 70’s anyway thanks to our gooberment.
Oh, yeah, pro tip. If you have gray hair, dye it. Clients like vital looking speakers, presenters, workshopers. It doesn’t matter how old you are, just how you look.
Finally, if you find yourself without any tools at all, you can open a can by pressing it against any concrete surface and turning the can until you’ve ground down the rim.
What, you just don’t beat the can with a butcher knife until it breaks and rips your hand open ? See 51:40 in “American Blackout 2013”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYoXxVnTePA
If you are interested:
How to Jailbreak Your Kindle
Most of us will have to work into our 70’s anyway thanks to our gooberment.
Most of us will have to work until we die anyway thanks to our gooberment.
FTFY.
“… but she has not left that company.”
True. She loves what she does, for one, and two, we don’t have much choice at present, since I’m apparently too old to do anything in IT anymore, and mos def too old to go back to the cops or military. Which is utter hoss shit, of course, but there it is. So we’re down to her one income, plus her piddly retirement from the state and my piddly SS, for now.
“It’s hard starting out with no money coming in, but still form a corp for what Mrs. OFD does and start looking for your own work. Keep it on the sly until you build up a clientele. I know you guys are up there in age, but what have you got to lose. Most of us will have to work into our 70’s anyway thanks to our gooberment.”
I will have this discussion again with her accordingly;
“Oh, yeah, pro tip. If you have gray hair, dye it. Clients like vital looking speakers, presenters, workshopers. It doesn’t matter how old you are, just how you look.”
She already does that, to some extent; I don’t have to, hahaha. Yet. And we both look younger than we are and usually act it, too.
That’s one of the reasons I’m against the regulatory state. More rules favor larger companies over smaller ones. Larger companies tend to be more focused on the bottom line. Smaller companies in my experience are more concerned about their individual customers, they people they employ and their community. This isn’t always true, but it is true more often than not.
Dave H, I have to agree with SteveF (perish the thought!) and MrAtoz.
I’m not saying to tell them to FROAD right away, just get to the point where you can.
Hmm. If Miles_Teg agrees with me about something I said, perhaps I need to reconsider.
Don’t worry about agreement and reconsideration going in the other direction, Miles_Teg. It’s simply not going to happen that I agree that Hillary Clinton is a hottie.
I have a probably muddled memory of a French instructor
saying that “chinoiserie” or something was the word for
both Chinese culture and Chinese deviousness.
Are you saying that Fu Manchu was in fact a more realistic depiction of Chinese culture than was Carlie Chan?
I have one of these that seems to be a good simple thing.
It’s like a huge P-51 or P-38.
https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Can-Opener-Ganji-Kankiri/dp/B001TV6A7G
“Are you saying that Fu Manchu was in fact a more realistic depiction of Chinese culture than was Carlie Chan?”
Not particularly, myself, but that American teacher who had spent
quite a bit of time in France said that the French see it that way.
for everyday use we have a can opener that cuts sideways thru the can seal. The cut off end will fit pretty tightly back on the can. Never had occasion to try it on the #10 can….
nick
belly full of fried clam strips, sleepy time……
It seems to me that buying a fighter plane to open cans is overkill.
I have a cheap one of those side-cut can openers that tosses
slivers of metal into the food too often (I mean once is plenty).
It bears mention that an old-timey church key opener
can be used for opening a can by just overlapping the little
triangular cuts. These things are also handy for things like
air holes in a quick hobo stove. Safe to use, but of course
the result has lots of nasty edges. Church key is also a handy
general prying tool (but it probably won’t get into your
neighbor’s email account).
I’d love to own and fly a real P-51. If it wasn’t for the P-51, my dad would have probably been shot down over Germany and I might never have been born. Which reminds me that we just finished watching The Man in the High Castle last night. I was surprised to see that they actually got SS ranks, insignia, ribbon bars, and proper forms of address correct, which is nearly unprecedented in my experience. (No addressing SS officers as “Herr Gruppenfuhrer” and so on. The “Herr” was used by the Wehrmacht, but never by the SS.)
“Desperate Paul Ryan Floods Wisconsin with Misleading Television Ads”
http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/07/19/desperate-paul-ryan-floods-wisconsin-airwaves-misleading-television-ads/
RINO.
Hey @DH, you’ve got new neighbors! “A Mormon Tycoon Wants to Build Joseph Smith’s Mega-Utopia in Vermont”
http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-newvistas-mormon-utopia/
“… publicize their chicanery and outright fraud at every opportunity. Including, but not limited to, their own reviews.”
Hmm. I had an enlightening experience of that today. A couple of weeks ago, I used eGun, a German firearms auction site (somewhat like US Gunbroker) to order a pair of Mauser stock screws in a “buy it now” listing. I paid the commercial vendor by bank transfer on the same day, and sent them a copy of the transfer confirmation by e-mail for good measure. A couple of days later they sent me a payment reminder, to which I replied with a copy of the previous mail and attachment, whereupon they complained that I was a non-payer and had my account peremptorily and unilaterally locked by eGun. When I sent eGun a copy of the correspondence and the proof of payment, they reactivated my account immediately.
Jump forward to yesterday: I decided to leave negative feedback regarding the vendor on the auction site, using its feedback function. My – in my opinion rather mild – comment was: “Vendor’s behaviour inexplicable. Had to get eGun to intervene.”
Today my negative comment has simply vanished from that vendor’s feedback listing. I have mailed eGun asking for an explanation, but seriously doubt that any will be forthcoming. Obviously their bottom-line is that they do more business with a commercial vendor (7000+ listed transactions) than with any one private buyer, so they simply deleted my feedback… No surprise, but hardly behaviour that inspires my confidence as a buyer.
“I can’t imagine any situation in which I’d pay $700 for a can opener.”
Those are bound to be readily available (lightly) used at more reasonable prices. Restaurants are precarious businesses, and their equipment often ends up in liquidation sales. Around here there are plenty of businesses specialised in reselling used and refurbished restaurant, hotel and catering hardware…
“(No addressing SS officers as “Herr Gruppenfuhrer” and so on. The “Herr” was used by the Wehrmacht, but never by the SS.)”
I thought the Krauts used “Herr” with *all* guys. Herr Dr, Herr Professor, Herr Dr Professor, and so on.
Do Antec and other good brands still have their stuff built in China, or did they bring it back home to get control of QA?
The SS considered the “Herr” to be an aristocratic affectation. An SS colonel (Standartenfuhrer) addressing his Heeres counterpart would normally use “Oberst” rather than “Herr Oberst”. Interestingly, the converse was not true. The Oberst would normally address his counterpart as “Standartenfuhrer” rather than “Herr Standartenfuhrer”, not to acknowledge SS practice but to show subtle contempt. The Army and the SS really didn’t like each other.
“…you’ve got new neighbors! “A Mormon Tycoon Wants to Build Joseph Smith’s Mega-Utopia in Vermont…”
Yup, we heard about this a while back up here in Retroville; on the one hand, all the usual lefty and commie suspects are against this guy and his wunnerful plan. And on the same hand, a couple of them are probably right. The dude is all numbers and graphs and charts and architectural models, which is nice, but there is real topography and climate and people involved, and I don’t think he’s on that clue train yet. There are already a few LDS congregations scattered around the state but a vision of 20k or 20 million is just not gonna happen in reality here. There aren’t 20 million peeps in all of New England, so cramming them all in on a thousand acres in the valleys around Sharon is a non-starter.
Additional pesky edit: Another factor, and probably the major one, is that Arch-Cardinal Hall or whatever his cult’s salutation, is well along in years and is the prime mover, or driving force for this….this….Utopian project, both bad words among 18th-C British literati. Once he’s spun off to his space empire outside the solar system and become a mini-Lord or something, I doubt this caper will continue for very long, if at all.
Denis is correct; you can probably find a commercial style can opener on the cheap(er) if you look. If you’re opening 10+ cans a day, those things are more or less a necessity. And various health inspectors want to see that it’s cleaned, and that it’s not going to contaminate the food with slivers of steel.
Amazon has Alibaba envy. Jack Ma, the CEO of Alibaba, claims that the counterfeits on his site are often better than the real thing, and Wall Street doesn’t flinch. Bezos was a quant and used to be the favorite son until Ma came along.
Bob — Have you noticed that the rural town in “The Man In The High Castle” is the same used for “Northern Exposure” except shot with different lighting and camera angles?
Amazon filmed the pilot for “The Man In The High Castle” out in Roslyn, WA around the time of my brief Seattle tech startup employee disaster -er- experience.
The dude is all numbers and graphs and charts and architectural models, which is nice, but there is real topography and climate and people involved, and I don’t think he’s on that clue train yet. There are already a few LDS congregations scattered around the state but a vision of 20k or 20 million is just not gonna happen in reality here. There aren’t 20 million peeps in all of New England, so cramming them all in on a thousand acres in the valleys around Sharon is a non-starter.
This model almost looks like a blueprint for PRCs (public residential complexes). 20 million people across thousands of valleys XXXXXXXX hundreds of valleys XXXXXXXX a valley.
I love a story with a happy ending.
“20 million people across thousands of valleys XXXXXXXX hundreds of valleys XXXXXXXX a valley.”
There aren’t even that many Mormons. And this guy’s Utopian dream project would take decades to pull off, by which time, he, as the main driving force, would be long dead. And a few Vermont winters and crappy net access would probably put the kibosh on a bunch of starry-eyed residents PDQ.
“In 2012, there were an estimated 14.8 million Mormons, with roughly 57 percent living outside the United States. It is estimated that approximately 4.5 million Mormons – roughly 30% of the total membership – regularly attend services. A majority of U.S. Mormons are white and non-Hispanic (84 percent).” (Wiki)
“I love a story with a happy ending.”
Note the participation/leadership role/s of actual, genuine communists. A bunch of these people, including Obola and Cankles, cut their eyeteeth on channeling Alinsky and Lenin.
“20 million people across thousands of valleys XXXXXXXX hundreds of valleys XXXXXXXX a valley.”
There aren’t even that many Mormons. And this guy’s Utopian dream project would take decades to pull off, by which time, he, as the main driving force, would be long dead. And a few Vermont winters and crappy net access would probably put the kibosh on a bunch of starry-eyed residents PDQ.
Sounds like the perfect model for the governmental public residential complexes for the future. After all, who needs more than 200 ft2 of living space ? Add some tasty 2,000 calorie soy meals and voila, a perfect model to house the expected one billion people living in North America by 2100. With continued unfettered immigration and the open border advocates like Paul Ryan, I think that we will just make it. In fact, with a little pushing, we might go right past that number.
There aren’t even that many Mormons.
Maybe they could fill the vacancies with Scientologists. I’d hate for a perfectly good PRC to go to waste. Future employment for MrAtoz. I’m looking for a door gunner. Anybody available?
You say PRC, I say Biodiesel Processing Plant.
“You say PRC, I say Biodiesel Processing Plant.”
Or simply “BPP.” Be pee-pee, in other phonological format.
“I’m looking for a door gunner. Anybody available?”
I’m your huckleberry.
Oh, and the bit in the Bloomberg article on Joseph Smith’s and other writings being in some kind of ersatz “15th-C” English? Not really; it’s just made-up blather the wack job cobbled together from what he remembered of the KJV and “Pilgrim’s Progress,” both standard and regular reading for earlier generations of mostly British Protestant Murkans.
And here is FUSA Mideast policy summarized nicely:
https://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2016/07/20/anyone-calling-bullshit-must-explain-us-policy-in-the-mideast-in-20-words/
Seen on front page of today’s Fort Bend Herald,
“Borrow money from pessimists. They don’t expect it back.”