# aluminium pots



## jg grant

Hi, just had sight of some aspiring young TV chef useing a steel whisk in an aluminium pot. This is an absolute no no. Surprised it wasn't picked up on the programme . So for all you keen amateur cooks out there who may not be aware that a steel whisk can take scrapings of an aluminium pot and deposit it in the sauce be aware. It causes aluminiumzheimers!
As an aside, I wonder if all those starry eyed young chefs have ever thought about the future. I'm talking thirty plus years never having christmas,new year or any of the public holidays off. Maybe it's just me, but I'm recently retired so I don't give a, whatever it is you don't give in these situations. These days I make sawdust with an occasional R/C schooner as a by product. Happy Christmas everyone . Ronnie


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## TOM ALEXANDER

jg grant said:


> Hi, just had sight of some aspiring young TV chef useing a steel whisk in an aluminium pot. This is an absolute no no. Surprised it wasn't picked up on the programme . So for all you keen amateur cooks out there who may not be aware that a steel whisk can take scrapings of an aluminium pot and deposit it in the sauce be aware. It causes aluminiumzheimers!
> As an aside, I wonder if all those starry eyed young chefs have ever thought about the future. I'm talking thirty plus years never having christmas,new year or any of the public holidays off. Maybe it's just me, but I'm recently retired so I don't give a, whatever it is you don't give in these situations. These days I make sawdust with an occasional R/C schooner as a by product. Happy Christmas everyone . Ronnie


Don't think you need to worry too much -- I believe it was some kind of aluminum salt the boffins found in the brains of those who passed from oldtimers disease -- and that we ingest all sorts of aluminum daily, it being one of the more common metals in our everyday environment. So a little aluminum plating on the whisk probably won't hurt -- certainly no more so than the lead paint we sucked off our cribs when we were infants.


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## Keltic Star

In that case should we stop drinking beer out of aluminum cans?


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## alan ward

Keltic Star said:


> In that case should we stop drinking beer out of aluminum cans?


oh god,please no!


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## PatriciaAnnT

Here in the US, aluminum cans are lined with a plastic substance......equally as toxic, I'm sure.


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## stein

The Watchtower sect has had this stuff covered from long ago, join at once: http://www.seanet.com/~raines/aluminum.html


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## jg grant

Hi Tom #2. I agree about the lead based paint and what about ingesting train smoke by standing on a railway bridge? However the fact remains that aluminium residue is unacceptable in a sauce in a professional kitchen and should be unacceptable elsewhere as well. Cheers Ronnie


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## len mazza

Hi,Years ago now there was a joker,who being worse for wear,returned aboard and dumped all the aluminium pots over the side.Nedless to say he was forever known as Paddy The Pot,and yes he did throw his hand in next day.


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## kevjacko

_As an aside, I wonder if all those starry eyed young chefs have ever thought about the future. I'm talking thirty plus years never having christmas,new year or any of the public holidays off. Maybe it's just me, but I'm recently retired so I don't give a, whatever it is you don't give in these situations. These days I make sawdust with an occasional R/C schooner as a by product. Happy Christmas everyone . Ronnie_

My laddie suggested the other week he fancied being a cook when he left school. I hope I've done enough to dissuade him. At sea it was great, but doing it ashore! no chance. Although I think he may have the talent and a way in the kitchen, it's not a career path I'd choose now. I've been out the game a long time, retrained and reinvented myself long since. The tag of cook still sticks though and I do keep my hand in. No way would I do it for a living now though.


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## John Rogers

Many moons I remembered a army catering inspector that would swish a magnet around inside the clean pots to see if he could pick up any steel wool that the cooks may have used to clean the pots, Steel Wool was outlawed, but aluminium wasn't.


John.


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## Ron Stringer

From the Alzheimer's Society website

"A number of environmental factors have been put forward as possible contributory causes of Alzheimer's disease in some people. Among these is aluminium. There is cir***stantial evidence linking this metal with Alzheimer's disease, but no causal relationship has yet been proved. As evidence for other causes continues to grow, a possible link with aluminium seems increasingly unlikely."

I remember reading in the press some 2 or 3 years ago that the connection between aluminium and dementia had been disproved but have never bothered to look any further into it.


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## John Rogers

Ron,
I was reading that medical teams have been testing residents of India for Altzheimers disease and they come up with some correlation by eating a lot of curry you don't seem to get it. Apparently they have a very low incidence of this disease in India.
So if you do not mind a few brown spots on your shorts go for the curry.

John


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## spongebob

During the war aluminum pots were hard to come by in NZ and I believe that they were collected for the war effort in the UK
Did your mum's big hot pot pot end up as a rudder on a Spitfire?

In NZ pots wore thin and developed pin hole leaks so the authoruties made available blanking patches to seal same. A lot of aluminum must have been worn off the pot bottom and enter the food to cause the leaks yet there was no appreciable rise in dementia then.
Perhaps the elderly died of earlier old age then before this modern ailment caught up with them.

Bob


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## Duncan112

spongebob said:


> During the war aluminum pots were hard to come by in NZ and I believe that they were collected for the war effort in the UK
> Did your mum's big hot pot pot end up as a rudder on a Spitfire?
> 
> Bob


I believe that the aluminium used in pots was unsuitable for use in aircraft structures because of the different alloy constituents so the vast majority was dumped. 

However it should not be underestimated as a morale booster as the populace that contributed felt that they were doing their "bit" Similarly I understand that the iron railings and gates collected were also unsuitable for recycling and a large proportion were dumped at sea.


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## lakercapt

Not long ago watched a programme featuring the Queens chef.
Showed him working in the royal kitchen and they were using aluminum pots so if its OK for her!!!!!!


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## jg grant

Hi Kevjacko #9. You will know as well as me that it can be a fun and rewarding job but there are sacrifices as I mentioned earlier and you can add on weekends to that list. BUT! I had a plumber in recently and he charged me more than three times an hour that I ever earned plus a call out fee and a mark up on stock used. And the clock starts ticking from the time he (allegedly) left his work place. So maybe you could point that out to your lad. Plumbing's the way to go mate! Regards and merry Christmas, Ronnie.


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## Ray Mac

kevjacko said:


> _As an aside, I wonder if all those starry eyed young chefs have ever thought about the future. I'm talking thirty plus years never having christmas,new year or any of the public holidays off. Maybe it's just me, but I'm recently retired so I don't give a, whatever it is you don't give in these situations. These days I make sawdust with an occasional R/C schooner as a by product. Happy Christmas everyone . Ronnie_
> 
> My laddie suggested the other week he fancied being a cook when he left school. I hope I've done enough to dissuade him. At sea it was great, but doing it ashore! no chance. Although I think he may have the talent and a way in the kitchen, it's not a career path I'd choose now. I've been out the game a long time, retrained and reinvented myself long since. The tag of cook still sticks though and I do keep my hand in. No way would I do it for a living now though.


My lad left catering college with C&G 1/2/3. over 20 odd years ago Kev, I never tried to stop him, but did tell him it was long hours and so forth. John went to London to start as Commie chef at Royal Kensington gardens Hotel stayed in London for several years, came to Slayley hall for a couple of years, opened Seaham Hall Hotel then moved onto private yacht as head chef on mega bucks. Now on cruise liner before retiring if everything goes well at 55.


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## Pat Kennedy

I saw this little clip on U Tube, about how they actually make aluminium pots by spinning a flat disc on a lathe, and working it with hand tools, fascinating.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO06tQ9ETEY


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## Dickyboy

Pat Kennedy said:


> I saw this little clip on U Tube, about how they actually make aluminium pots by spinning a flat disc on a lathe, and working it with hand tools, fascinating.
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO06tQ9ETEY


Thanks for that clip, I like to learn something every day, and it never occurred to me that that's how they made things like that. I always assumed that such things, if I thought about it at all, were just stamped out.


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## Ron Stringer

On cost grounds, for many years shipowners jibbed at putting self-supporting mast transmitting antennas aboard ship and persisted with wire antennas suspended between the masts. The best low-loss, low-leakage insulators were made from glazed ceramics which were both expensive and fragile. Crews eager to get started with cargo working were prone to letting-go the antenna halyards and allowing the antennas to fall to the deck. That had pretty catastrophic results for the insulators. On some ships they were replaced every voyage.

Marconi's experimented with cheaper, dough-moulded high resistance plastics which were used by power companies ashore. Unfortunately at sea, insulator surfaces quickly attained a coating of salt spray and the high voltage R.F. tracked through this conductive coating, arcing across the insulator. That happens with all the insulators, ceramic or plastic but the difference is that the plastics are made from carbon and the tracking leaves a conductive carbon track from one end of the insulator to the other.

To overcome this problem we had the manufacturer spin copper end-pieces onto the insulators so that any arcing was through the air between the two copper end and not across the plastic surface. Proved very successful in use at sea.

I used to visit the suppliers in Walthamstow and chat to the two old guys that did the copper spinning as shown on the video. The same people also spun the copper hoods/cowls that went on top of the lead-in insulators for the main and emergency transmitting antennas. Plus a massive range of other items such as copper funnels or tundishes used in the chemical and brewing industries.

Seeing the video took me back at least 40 years.


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## kevjacko

Burned Toast said:


> My lad left catering college with C&G 1/2/3. over 20 odd years ago Kev, I never tried to stop him, but did tell him it was long hours and so forth. John went to London to start as Commie chef at Royal Kensington gardens Hotel stayed in London for several years, came to Slayley hall for a couple of years, opened Seaham Hall Hotel then moved onto private yacht as head chef on mega bucks. Now on cruise liner before retiring if everything goes well at 55.


Sure I saw a media story about your laddie not long back. Can't remember whether it was local newspaper or TV. Am I right on that one BT


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## Ray Mac

kevjacko said:


> Sure I saw a media story about your laddie not long back. Can't remember whether it was local newspaper or TV. Am I right on that one BT


Johns on the Saga add for their Cruise ships, not sure about the papers?.

Ray


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