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Larry Jaques[_4_] Larry Jaques[_4_] is offline
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Default Stainless steel, epoxy, and tableware

On Thu, 02 Jan 2014 18:31:26 -0600, Frnak McKenney
wrote:

On Wed, 01 Jan 2014 03:24:40 +0100, Uffe Bærentsen wrote:
Den 31-12-2013 23:01, Frnak McKenney skrev:

As we sat around the table afterwards, one topic that came up was the
odd look of their stainless tableware, or to be more specific, the
knives. These were made by a company named Gorham (Fairview pattern?)
and had given wonderful service for many years, but recently they had
noticed that some of the knives were "separating": the blade had begun
to separate from the handle, showing a minor gap of roughly 1/8".

Hoping for a simple fix, I spent a couple of hours exploring the 'Web
with different combinations of keywords looking for instructions like
"heat to 400degF for 10 minutes and the epoxy will soften, then gently
press the blade back into the handle and it will be as god as new for
another decade or two". Nope. Most of what I found related to
stainless blades set into sterling handles (not the case here), and
there were more descriptions of how to tear the handle off and sell
the sterling than ideas of how to repair a knife.

Has anyone here ever seen this problem? My cousing said it might be
related to washing the knives in a dishwasher, but only about a
quarter of the knives seem to be affected.

Does anyone know how I could learn about the properties of the "epoxy"
(an assumption, the term pops up a lot)?

It's not a life-or-death problem, but if anyone has any suggestions I
would appreciate hearing from you.

Thanks. And a Happy New Year and a Euphorious Epiphany to all!


Not a fix for the knives but an advise for washing such knives in an
dishwasher.
Did see the problem years ago and a member of the family came up
with this: Knives with blades glued into the handles are to be
washed with the blade downwards.
Did work for me and others in the family for years :-)


Thanks, Uffe.

Do you have any idea why that would make a difference? I suppose that,
once any separation existed between the blade and handle, it would
encourage water to drip out rather than collect.


There's a big pressure differential between the knife handle being
directly over the dishwasher nozzle and it being 8" away. There's
probably a small temperature differential, too.

I hand-wash my dishes and they drip dry in the open dishwasher.

--
Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing.
This is the ultimate. -- Chuang-tzu