Can Openers (O/T?)

Hello, This may be off topic but my Mum has developed difficulty with her hands as she has got older. One of the things that particularly gives her trouble is opening cans of food. Does anyone have a suggestion of a suitable opener? I am thinking maybe something electric?

Go to Argos and buy an electric one

My mother and my sister who has developed arthritis in wrists at an unfortunately young age both use one of these.

If her hands are weak your mum may appreciate one of these as well

Again both my mum and sister use one and despite it's somewhat flimsy appearance and the groans it makes in use I haven't seen it fail on a tight lid yet.

The above links are for illustrative purposes only, I'm neutral on the suppliers in them.

G.Harman

I have the J&L (or whoever) version of this...

My partner only buys cans with ring pulls and she has a device similar to this.

Colin Bignell

We've got one of these (bought for similar reasons):

Works very well

We went down this road a few months ago. Got my elderly mother both the tin opener and jar opener described by damduck-egg. Both work well. But subsequently we got the JML one mentioned by Grimly. It has four batteries in it and is a little larger as a result, as opposed to the two batteries in the Culinaire one, so I assume is more powerful. It also works well. See

We bought these for my MIL and they seem to work well, although I had to write "JAR" & "TIN" on them in big letters because she kept using the wrong one...

Also, when the rubber grippers fell off the jar opener, I wrote to Culinaire to ask if they could supply replacements, and they sent a whole new opener, FOC. I was most impressed.

A feature that I like and forgot to mention is that the JML can opener cuts _through_ the rim of the tin, not below it nor down through the top. As a result, you have a blunt edge on both the opened tin and the removed top. Half the rim remains on the body of the can, and half on the top that's cut off, so there's very little chance of cutting yourself on an exposed sharp edge.

I use a previous version of one of these, it's brilliant. I only recharge the eneloop batteries I use in it once or twice a year.

Sadly it also means it won't cope with some cans. Also build quality is what you would expect of jML. We have three, two of them no longer open cans. They make a noise, run around the edge - can not opened.

Some electric ones require considerable hand pressure to get them started.

So I'd look for one specifically for those with a weak grip, etc.

I don't understand why people are so keen on openers which leave a lid with a nice safe blunt edge - but also leave a tin with lethally sharp edges!

My wife uses one and, in my view, the tin is far more dangerous than a sharp edged lid.

Thanks everyone for your replies. The Culinare looks good.

If you have a can sealing machine, you want to take the rolled edge off, so that the can may be reused. Not that I expect that there are many people who do that these days.

Colin Bignell

If still reading... I asked similar a while ago. Oxo brand [ avail from dunelm] was recommended to me. Bought one and proved excellent.

Mine doesn't.

I see a few buyers slagging off the JML one, but I suspect it's more to do with their cack-handed manner of positioning the opener on the tin. It is possible to mis-align it, and if you do that with every tin it will probably buggerup the cutting edge. Fortunately, it doesn't take much of a clue to get it right and perhaps that's too much of a stretch for some people.