Can Openers

About a year and a half ago I lost my can opener of 15 years.  I probably dropped it in the trash and took it out to the Dumpster without noticing.  One would think that this is a trivial replacement.  This was not the case.  I've gone through quite a few in the last 18ish months and finally found a good one.

First I'll talk about the bad ones.

The first one I bought was the butterfly type with the punch that pokes a triangular hole in the can at one end and a bottle opener at the other.  It had a small blade that cuts the metal and a drive wheel that is rotated with the butterfly crank.  This just didn't work well.  The wheel didn't grip the edge of the can unless you held it at just the right angle and really squeezed the handles, hurting my hand.  And, because of the need to really squeeze the handles it didn't last long.  I bought it because it was all I could find at the grocery store and it was cheap.  I went through several of these.

For a while after that I just used the can opener on my Leatherman multitool.  This worked but it was slow going and it left very jagged edges on the top of the can making it difficult to remove.

The next one I bought was one of those side cutting types, this one from OXO.  It was kind of expensive.  It felt great in the hand.  The handles and crank are large and have a slightly grippy surface.  Most importantly it also opened the can easily. 

Unfortunately there are a couple deal breaking downsides.  The first is that it takes a lot of drawer space.  It a small kitchen that is an issue.  The large handles and padding pretty much made it impossible to throw it in the drawer, give the drawer a little shake and have it fit with all the other crap that is in there. 

The second failing is something many people think is a plus.  It's a side cutter.  This is to reduce the risk of cutting yourself on the sharp edges that top cutters leave.

Come on people.  You are in a room full of knives.  Exercising the caution needed to avoid injury is part of being there.  Our ancestors butchered game with obsidian knives.  We should be able to open a can without hurting ourselves. 

The real problem with side cutters appears when you open a can of tuna or meat packed in broth.  With a top cutter you just hold the can over the sink and press the freshly cut top into the can to squeeze the fluid out through a gap that is just the right size.  With side cutter the top won't fit inside the can and if you try to hold it on the edge and pour you will probably wind up spilling the contents and still find that a lot of fluid stays behind.

After all this I decided to find out the brand of my old one.  That's right.  I actually did pre-purchase research on a can opener.

After a little bit of googling I found that is was a Swing-a-Way 407xx (the 'X's representing a color code).  I now knew what to look for in the stores.  Target Ho!.

It turned out that Target had them … sort of.  They didn't have the normal model 407 but some "special" one with a modified design by Michael Graves, that was kind of expensive.  The plastic handles he replaced the metal ones with spun around and fell off.  He added a grippy surface to the crank, which was nice, but I could tell would be a point failure in the future and a magnet to remove tops that fall in that just wasn't strong enough to do so.  It was all marketing gimickry, trivial "improvements" and a "designer" label.  Only a big shot celebrity designer could take a design that has been around since the thirties and make it worse.  I promptly returned it, and I guess a lot of people have done so since it isn't on Targets web site.

The good news is that I finally found one in my local Ace hardware.  I should just start going there first since they always seem to have what I'm looking for.  The bad news is that they are now made in China.  It looks and feels as I remember my old one did.  Knowing the Chinese reputation for using cheap steel only time will tell if it is made as well.

This episode is more evidence of something I've been more and more convinced of over the years.  It is a rare event when modifications of mature technology are a net improvement and frequently are just useless bells and whistles.  The fat handles on the OXO were offset by the extra drawer space it took.  The side cutter's reduction of the small risk of a minor injury was offset by the definite increase of spillage.  The Michael Graves modifications made it look good in the store but reduced its actual usefulness.

Now that I have a good can opener they'll probably start putting pop tops on everything.

 SECOND/ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS:  While bemoaning my can opener woes some people have suggested an electric one.  Besides the fact that they are just indolent (unless you are arthritic), they take up counter space, use electricity, which isn't free, they would be useless after a zombie apocalypse, by which time I would be using my Leatherman multitool anyway.