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Make your Revere Ware look like new

We offer plenty of cleaning tips, but unless you are obsessed with cleaning your cookware, inevitably over the years it will look like ours did, with lots of crud stuck in the nooks and crannies around the outside of pots and pans, black burnt on spots on the copper bottom that just won’t come off, and lots of deep scratches that no amount of Bar Keeper’s Friend can get out.

Now you have a new option for complete restoration.  Classic Kitchens & More offers a restoration service that (along with our replacement parts) will have your Revere Ware looking almost like the day it was made.

Some close-ups show the amazing difference even better.

The results are pretty close to perfect; there are still a few “love” marks in the cookware from deeper scratches and some deeper pits on he inside (most likely from acidic foods or someone used oven cleaner to clean out some burnt on food).  I prefer them this way so they retain a little bit of their history.

Please contact Classic Kitchens and More (www.classickitchensandmore.com) for a quote.  Note that they can also do small repairs where the handle comes away from the pot/pan, as long as it hasn’t separated in such a way as to leave a hole.

Update: Unfortunately we can no longer recommend Classic Kitchens and More.  We helped them some years back with the production of some coffee maker cords, and, after they received the items (perhaps we were too trusting) they failed to pay us the thousands of dollars we paid on their behalf.

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Taking off old 2-screw handles

Sometimes, handles that have been in use for years can be very difficult to get off so you can replace them with new ones.  Frequently, screws and nuts will rust together, making them impossible to get apart (the nut simply spins).  Take this one for example.  Years of grease make even the handles reluctant to separate.

Unfortunately, in this case I had to break apart the handle to expose the screws so I could twist them apart, and the screws themselves broke off rather than unscrew.

In this case, I used a screwdriver to pry the handle halves apart until one of them broke off.  I tried prying the rest of the Bakelite off, but the handle spline started to deform.  So I placed the handle against a hard surface (concrete) and repeatedly hit it with a hammer until all the Bakelite was off.  Then I used two pairs of pliers to try to unscrew the screws, which broke off.

Sometimes it simply isn’t possible to save the old handle or hardware when removing them.

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Melted Revere Ware Tri-Ply Cookware

Customer Jim sent us these pictures of his destroyed try-ply cookware.  It offers a cautionary tale of using too high of a heat and/or leaving your cookware unattended.

We’ve shown before that even for copper bottom cookware, it is unwise to heat the pans for an extended period of time as it can damage the copper layer.

If you do overheat your cookware, LET IT COOL SLOWLY BY ITSELF.  If you douse a hot piece of cookware with cold water, it will almost certainly warp the bottom and it won’t sit flat any longer.

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Vintage pressure cooker indented bottom mystery

Some of the vintage pressure cookers come with an indented bottom, while some are flat.

Revere Ware originally came out with these pressure cookers in 1946 (see the Revere Ware history site).  The original design had a pressure gauge and there was a small rubber gasket underneath.  This proved problematic and in 1948 they came out with a revised design that used a dial gauge.

The manual for the original pressure gauge model shows a flat bottom.  I have two specimens that also have a flat bottom.  We can presume that the indented bottom variety came out after 1948.   Looking at all available vintage pressure cookers on Ebay (that have pictures of the bottom), plus my own specimens, they clearly come with the indented and non-indented bottoms:

Indented bottom: 7
Flat bottom: 3

The vintage gauge-style pressure cooker manuals do not discuss an indented bottom or show pictures of the bottom, so there is no help there.  From the relative quantities of indented vs flat bottom pressure cookers in the wild, I would presume that at some point earlier in the full production life of these pressure cookers, they switched to the indented bottom because it was preferable for some reason.

Does anyone know when they might have made the switch and what might be better about the indented style bottom?

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Revere Ware Q&A: Is Revere Ware oven safe?

A customer asks:

I have an old revere were stock pot it is a six quart and I want to know if it is oven safe and to what temp.

At on point Revere Ware stated that their cookware with Bakelite handles was oven safe.  But at some point, perhaps in the 60’s or so, they stopped making this claim.  Our own testing (with original and our
replacement parts) shows that there is a temperature around or above 350 degrees or so where the Bakelite will break down and emit a horrible odor.  Trust us that this is not an odor you want in your house as it is hard to get rid of.

The problem is that even if an oven is set at 300 or 350, ovens often heat unevenly and some parts can get much hotter, which will break down the Bakelite.

We don’t recommend putting anything with Bakelite in the oven and our parts are not offered as oven safe.  It is also important to make sure that on gas stoves, the flame from the burners doesn’t lick over the edge of the pan and heat the handles.  In addition to getting hot, this can also break them down and emit the horrible odor.

 

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Dangerous fix for vintage Revere Ware pressure cookers on Ebay

I came across this purported fix (pdf in case the listing is gone) for faulty vintage Revere Ware pressure cooker over pressure plugs on Ebay.

The problem with over pressure plugs on the vintage cookers is (a) they contain solder inside that will melt (thus opening up the over pressure hole) when the pressure gets too high, and once blown, they are useless, and (b) they are no longer available.

While they do include a copy of the pressure cooker manual (which you can download from our site for free), the fix itself is nothing more than a screw and nut that will permanently block off the over pressure hole.

While it may be frustrating not being able to use your pressure cooker without an over pressure plug, plugging the hole and leaving yourself with no over pressure release is dangerous.  The instructions that came with the “fix” give no warning as to the dangers of not having a pressure relief when using a pressure cooker.

We can’t recommend fixing your pressure cooker in this way.

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Revere kettles

Revere Ware produced tea kettles in many styles over the years, as evidenced by this ad (apparently from the 70’s given the avocado colored tea kettle).

The most iconic tea kettle is the stainless with copper bottom art-deco style which is still sold today.

We now have an information page for this kettle with care and use tips.  We are in the early stages of producing replacement parts (handles, whistles, and triggers) for these kettles.

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More finding Revere Ware on Ebay

Ebay now appears to do some classification of its own, although it is far from complete.  This page separates out some Revere Ware listings into categories.  The amount of categories is far from complete and this only appears to cover a small number of the available Revere Ware related auctions.

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Capturing the Revere Ware era

This ad from 1948 captures the Revere Ware era perfectly.  We use our tea kettle almost every day but the percolator had been sitting in the garage due to a fancy espresso machine in the house.

I recently took my family camping which proved to be a perfect opportunity to try out my vintage Revere Ware percolator.

The percolator worked well and made great (and strong) coffee.   The directions I’ve found for this percolator say to percolate for 3 to 4 minutes.  Before the Revere Ware percolator, the only percolators I’d used in recent history are the large electric ones that make coffee in large batches; these stop percolating on their own.  I found myself letting the coffee percolate much longer than 3 or 4 minutes, expecting it to stop, hence the strong coffee.

The only trouble I had was a little of the coffee grounds escaped the basket and ended up in the coffee.  If I just let it settle for a few minutes before serving, it wasn’t a problem.

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Finding Revere Ware on Ebay

A couple of years ago we started a website that collects all Revere Ware related listings on Ebay and separates them out by type, size, etc.  For example, if you are looking for a 7 inch lid, you can see all currently available lids on Ebay sorted by size.  We update the listings every 30 minutes so it always has up-do-date listings.

It wasn’t the prettiest of websites, but it worked well.  We recently did a complete overhaul of the site which makes it both more attractive and more effective.  For example, we offer a grid view and a list view.

If you are looking for vintage Revere Ware cookware, this is arguably the easiest way to find what you want.

We’ve also been tracking the number of listings of Revere Ware related items on Ebay and it continues to grow and grow, meaning there is more and more items available to select from. Here is the graph of the number of items listed since May 2009.

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