Tin Openers

[hellymedic]

Couldn't find anything using Search - I tried, honest!

Our tin opener doesn't seem to be doing the job any more.

Sainsbury's website lists two sorts, the pricier 'soft grip' getting universally damned in reviews and the 60p Basics model getting a mix of praise and damnation.

I leave David to open the cans here as my hands are rather weak.

What should I buy next?

[Kim]

Barakta seems to like the ones Aldi have from time to time, which appear functional and not made of cheese.  Though not as much as she likes getting someone else to do the thumb-and-wrist work.

[Biggsy]

I expect someone here will suggest an electric one that you could manage by yourself.

Meanwhile for David I suggest: www.wilko.com/kitchen-gadgets-and-utensils/wilko-geared-can-opener/invt/0232675

- The advertised price is less than I remember paying, but it looks the same as I got.  It needs a firm squeeze for the initial puncture, but after that it's stunningly easy.  I promptly went back to buy a spare while I had the chance.  Wilko are all too quick to change their products.

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

I expect someone here will suggest an electric one that you could manage by yourself.

Meanwhile for David I suggest: www.wilko.com/kitchen-gadgets-and-utensils/wilko-geared-can-opener/invt/0232675

- The advertised price is less than I remember paying, but it looks the same.  It needs a fairly a hard squeeze for the initial puncture, but after that it's stunningly easy.  I promptly went back to buy a spare while I had the chance.  Wilko are all too quick to change their products.

Also it might get wet...

Wilko geared can opener. Hand wash only. Do not leave to soak.

[Biggsy]

You can get it wet.  Of course.

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

I'm expecting tins to be banned under 'elfnsafety regs any day now:

We are very fond of pine-apple, all three of us. We looked at the picture on the tin; we thought of the juice. We smiled at one another, and Harris got a spoon ready.

Then we looked for the knife to open the tin with. We turned out everything in the hamper. We turned out the bags. We pulled up the boards at the bottom of the boat. We took everything out on to the bank and shook it. There was no tin-opener to be found.

Then Harris tried to open the tin with a pocket-knife, and broke the knife and cut himself badly; and George tried a pair of scissors, and the scissors flew up, and nearly put his eye out. While they were dressing their wounds, I tried to make a hole in the thing with the spiky end of the hitcher, and the hitcher slipped and jerked me out between the boat and the bank into two feet of muddy water, and the tin rolled over, uninjured, and broke a teacup.

Then we all got mad. We took that tin out on the bank, and Harris went up into a field and got a big sharp stone, and I went back into the boat and brought out the mast, and George held the tin and Harris held the sharp end of his stone against the top of it, and I took the mast and poised it high up in the air, and gathered up all my strength and brought it down.

It was George’s straw hat that saved his life that day. He keeps that hat now (what is left of it), and, of a winter’s evening, when the pipes are lit and the boys are telling stretchers about the dangers they have passed through, George brings it down and shows it round, and the stirring tale is told anew, with fresh exaggerations every time.

Harris got off with merely a flesh wound.

After that, I took the tin off myself, and hammered at it with the mast till I was worn out and sick at heart, whereupon Harris took it in hand.

We beat it out flat; we beat it back square; we battered it into every form known to geometry – but we could not make a hole in it. Then George went at it, and knocked it into a shape, so strange, so weird, so unearthly in its wild hideousness, that he got frightened and threw away the mast. Then we all three sat round it on the grass and looked at it.

There was one great dent across the top that had the appearance of a mocking grin, and it drove us furious, so that Harris rushed at the thing, and caught it up, and flung it far into the middle of the river, and as it sank we hurled our curses at it, and we got into the boat and rowed away from the spot, and never paused till we reached Maidenhead.

Although plastic wrapping is also increasingly dangerous.

[Kim]

While we're on the subject, a recommendation for these: https://www.completecareshop.co.uk/kitchen-aids/bottle-and-jar-openers/magi-pull-can-and-bottle-opener-view-large

I found one in Sainsbury's emporium of toothy comesibles a while ago and thought it looked sensibel.  Barakta was initially skeptical^[1] when I brought it home, but has conceded that it's just the thing for getting the lids off the ring-pull kind of tins.  Some teaspoon handle action may be required to gain initial purchase on the ring-pull.


_{[1] "Why have you bought me a spack-handle?" I believe were her words.}

[woollypigs]

Only thing that works, the one in a Swiss army knife or a P-38 or P-51.

All others are crap! Electronic, spinny things will fail very fast.

In the last few years we have killed or worn out at least three can openers of various quality. But what have never dies is the Swiss army one or my folks P-51 which I used for a good 20 years +

[Kim]

While that type are admirably reliable, they're the tin-opening equivalent of stripping wire with your teeth.

I doubt hellymedic could operate one, and barakta certainly can't.

[Jurek]

Good Grips from JL, have been doing the tin-opening thing here for the last ~13 years, maybe more.

[andrew_s]

The easiest can opener I've ever used is a catering Bonzer.
Expensive, a permanent worktop fitment (or at least the base), but opening a can is a 3 or 4 second 1-handed job.

[Wowbagger]

We have an electric one somewhere, bought for Phyllis but little-used.

[trekker12]

Sainsbury's website lists two sorts, the pricier 'soft grip' getting universally damned in reviews and the 60p Basics model getting a mix of praise and damnation.

We've got the pricier soft grip type (I don't read online reviews for such things and don't do online comestible shopping so would have thrown it in the trolley in store). It works fine and have had it several years. It did get very stiff and hard to use a while back but dunking the gears in olive oil for five minutes soon sorted that out.

Does seem to leave a bit of a sharp edge if you take the lid off entirely though.

[Legs]

Only thing that works, the one in a Swiss army knife or a P-38 or P-51.

All others are crap!

Absolute rubbish!  Yes, a P-51 works fine if you're reasonably dextrous, and it's extremely compact, but if you think it's the only way, or the most efficient way of opening a tin, you're kidding yourself!

[hellymedic]

I think the tin opener David bought a couple of years ago was the Sainsbury's Soft Grips thing.

Initially it worked well but he is really struggling with it now. We've tried cleaning it etc.

[jsabine]

First introduced to the Culinare MagiCan by a lodger. When she moved out 10 years ago and took her can opener with her, I bought one, and haven't felt the need to look at anything different.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Only thing that works, the one in a Swiss army knife or a P-38 or P-51.

All others are crap!

Absolute rubbish!  Yes, a P-51 works fine if you're reasonably dextrous, and it's extremely compact, but if you think it's the only way, or the most efficient way of opening a tin, you're kidding yourself!

Well, a swiss army knife opener can be used one-handed, which makes it more useful to some of us than standard can openers.

[campagman]

Initially it worked well but he is really struggling with it now. We've tried cleaning it etc.

But have you oiled it? Makes a big differance.

[hellymedic]

Initially it worked well but he is really struggling with it now. We've tried cleaning it etc.

But have you oiled it? Makes a big differance.

No. Problem seems to be failure to grip and cut, not failure to advance, as far as I understand.
Can try lubrication.

[rogerzilla]

The crap stamped ones are the only ones that usually work.  Any attenpt to improve on the design always fails.

[Ham]

The Brabantia one similar to this has been workign for me for 35 years+. Opens tins easily and cleanly.

[Charlotte]

Hacksaw.

[Kim]

Shaped charge.

[Bledlow]

Only thing that works, the one in a Swiss army knife or a P-38 or P-51.

LockheedP-38 Lightning or North American P-51 Mustang? 

[Kim]

I assumed you offered the tin up to the unguarded chainring on the P-38...