Dish washer problem

[Dave]

I have written about this a couple of years ago.

The knives of my dinner cutlery service are and have been suffering from a crusting on the blades only, when washed in the dish washer. All other aspects of the service are OK.

I was advised at that time to remove any carbon steel knives from the area and see how I got on.

I am down to the point of not putting anything other than the basic knife, forks and spoons into the dishwasher, of the same set, along with the plates we have eaten from and the knives are still coming out of the dish washer with the same crusty brown marks on them. It is a raised from the blade sort of thing and doesn't look like it is eating into the metal.

Help anyone?

Dave

[spamlet]

What are they made of?

(Mind you, by the time you've put them in the dishwasher you could have rinsed them under the tap, dried them and put them away...)

If they are silver, get an aluminium takeaway container of the right size, put a tablespoon of washing soda in it and pour hot water over to dissolve. Put silver item in; cleans quite quickly. Then buff up with shammy with a bit of light cooking oil on (not sunflower - it is an almost indestructible glue when it 'dries' - makes good fly paper though)

If they are 'stainless' possibly the knives have been heat treated more than the 'softer' items, and haven't been polished properly, as sst does tend to go brown when hot and some 'polishes' would tend to cover this up rather than cleaning it off. Then the dishwasher just washes off the polish. You might find polishing it with something even as mild as toothpaste gets the brown film off.

Mind you, I find dishwashers tend to make things dirty anyway... And they make a right mess of glass - especially the good stuff!

S

[Rod]

On the same theme, I know that our stainless cutlery has a near invisible join between the knife blade and the handle. The two parts are made of significantly different alloys - and I'd assume this to be quite common. I think that if you washed the knives alone you'd still get the marks. Further, I guess that process that is making the marks is indeed eating away the blades, at least to some extent.

So the only possibilities for curing the problem I can come up with are a) trying a different detergent (although they might all be so similar as to make little difference); b) adjust the water softener settings to the absolute minimum (included for completeness rather than any real expectation of it working); c) wash the knives separately.

[Dave]

Surprisingly, the spoons and forks are marked up as 18-10 SS, but the knives are not

Once this dish washer breaks down, it will be back to hand washing again :-)

Thanks for the warning about the sunflower oil. If they were silver, I do the same but use baking powder and salt, much the same as the way you describe.

I took a particularly marked knife out today, I'll take a look at that idea. Thanks.

Dave

[Dave]

That all adds up. I'm going to start washing them on their own from now on and put the carbon steel knives back into the D.W. as well.

Tried all that over time, but there was no difference found.

Just what I am going to start doing.

Thanks

Dave

[Appin]

The message from "spamlet" contains these words:

There are dishwashers and dishwashers.

And users and users.

Load it carefully, choose your detergent VERY carefully and choose your temperature and program carefully and a dishwasher will be as gentle as hand washing. Jam the machine full of dishes or glasses and start it with regular dishwasher detergent on its standard program and you've got a recipe for ruining your best china or crystal. Or china AND crystal.