How to make the simplest can opener yourself. Safe can opener

Spring is just around the corner, and with it comes the grand opening of the summer camping season. Canned food has remained a constant participant in these events for decades now (we hope, at least not the same ones). But what if, after winter hibernation and under the influence of vitamin deficiency, you forgot your bottle opener at home, and you don’t even have a shabby folding knife in your pocket? Definitely don't sit hungry. And open a tin can using the old army method.

On an empty stomach it doesn’t feel very good. And if you and your whole company can’t solve a terribly complex puzzle, like how to open a can of canned food without an opener, knife, fork and other sharp objects, then this tip will come in handy. To successfully solve the quest, you will need little: just the presence of asphalt/brick/any flat stone, a little physical strength and the canned food itself.

Step 1

Find the hardest and most level surface possible. The aforementioned asphalt, brick, stone or curb would be ideal.

Step 2

Place the tin can on the stone with the “lid” down. Grab it tightly by the bottom. Did you grab it? Great. Now start rubbing. Quickly, with strength and zeal.

Step 3

After 20-30 seconds, turn the can over to its normal position. Notches should appear along the edges of the tin “lid”.

Hold the can sideways with both hands (be careful not to cut yourself on the sharp edges!) and apply pressure. If everything is done correctly, the can will open easily. If that doesn't work, try rubbing longer until you see liquid on the stone.

Now you definitely won’t remain hungry! And in such situations of varying degrees of extreme, “secret” knowledge will definitely come in handy.

Canned food has become a part of our lives. And now it’s hard to imagine your existence without this. Neat tin cans are very easy to use. They allow you to store the desired product for a long time without requiring special conditions. Many special devices have been invented to open such containers. But sometimes situations arise when these necessary items are simply not at hand. What to do in this case? How to open a tin can without an opener? It turns out that there are several interesting ways to do this. As an example, we can consider some of them.

With a knife

People do not always use some items for their intended purpose. Their ingenuity allows them to use the simplest things for the right purposes in a difficult situation. For example, there is a tin can of stew, but there is no way to open it. What to do in this case? How to open a tin can without an opener? This is where an ordinary kitchen or

You just need to follow a few simple steps:

1. First, the jar itself needs to be placed on your knees or held tightly between your legs. Otherwise, it may jump to the side, and the person risks getting hurt.
2. After this, the tip of the knife should be placed at the very edge of the jar, positioning it vertically to the surface.
3. Holding the handle with one hand, you need to strike it with a strong blow from above with the other. In this case, part of the tip will be inside the container.
4. Then, using forward movements, you should carefully cut the lid, moving the knife strictly along the diameter of the circle.
5. Pry the cut edge with the tip and lift it up.

This is one of the most popular options for how to open a can without an opener. Most men use it. As you know, many of them constantly carry a knife with them. And having a certain physical strength, it will not be difficult for any of them to perform simple actions.

With bare hands

Sometimes, by the will of fate, people find themselves in situations where they have nothing in their hands that could help solve such a problem. In this case, they have to rely only on themselves, deciding how to open a tin can without an opener. There is a method that only a strong and physically developed person can use. To do this, he will only need his own hands. The whole process consists of three stages:

• Holding the jar between your palms in a horizontal position, use the fingers of both hands to make a dent on the side surface exactly in the middle. After this, press the edges again so that the container bends even more in this place.
• Repeat the same steps on the opposite side.
• Firmly grasping both bottoms with your hands, make counter forward movements. As a result, the deflection points will crack and the can can be divided into two equal parts.

True, this method is applicable only if there is not a large amount of liquid inside the container. Although even this circumstance will not stop a hungry person.

Subtleties of design

But the use of force is not the only way out of such a situation. Yes, and the knife may not be at hand. How then to extract its contents from a tin container? Don't throw it away in this case. Sometimes the clue lies in the technical side of the issue. Understanding the technology of sealing food in tin containers, you can figure out how to open a tin can without an opener and a knife.

As you know, in industrial enterprises the process of rolling a tin container is that the edges of the lid are bent around the cylindrical base of the container using a press. To remove it, you need to remove the protruding layer of metal. This is very easy to do:

1. You need to take the jar in your hand so that its bottom lies in your palm.
2. Turn it upside down.
3. Pressing the jar onto a hard, rough surface (concrete, stone), make circular movements. Literally in 2-3 minutes the “side” will be erased. After this, all you have to do is lightly press the container from the sides, and the lid will bounce off to the side.

This method can be useful for those who find themselves far from civilization and do not take care of everything they need in time.

Non-standard use of cutlery

People always try to stock up on all sorts of clever gadgets to make their lives easier. But sometimes the situation gets out of control, and it becomes necessary to look for a non-standard way out of the situation. For example, you need to decide how to open a tin can without an opener at home. To do this, you can use the simplest tablespoon.

The whole process will, of course, take some time. But this problem is fading into the background. To open a regular tin can:

• Hold the container tightly with one hand. It can be placed on a table or held on your lap.
• Take a spoon in your other hand and rub it with its edge along the lid in the place where it comes into close contact with the “side”. Tin is a relatively soft material, so after just a few minutes a gap will form in that very place. It is advisable to do this around the entire perimeter.
• After this, you can use strong pressure to expand the resulting hole as much as possible. And then, using the spoon as a lever, lift and remove the lid.

It is better to do this work with cutlery made from more durable material. Therefore, an aluminum spoon will not work for this.

Everyone uses canned food these days. Their modern version is a glass jar closed with a twist-off tin lid. Anyone who has ever opened such canned food knows that it is not easy to do it manually. This is due to the small edges protruding from the back of the lids. They are screwed onto a jar, the neck of which is equipped with a large thread. When closing, the lid seems to be screwed into the jar.

This method of sealing has replaced the labor-intensive classic sealing lids. Agree that it is much simpler. After all, in order to tightly and hermetically close the jar, it is enough to turn the lid on the jar with a suitable thread until it stops. No seaming machines, everything is done by hand.

On the other hand, not many people manage to open such a lid manually without damaging its edges. Today’s homemade product will help solve this problem - an opener for twist-off caps.

Materials, tools

For our miracle invention we will need:

• A small piece of wooden block with a cross-section of 20x30 mm;
• Used 3 or 5 L PET canister;
• Wooden ice cream stick;
• Several screws with a wide head for wood (press washer).

You need very few tools for the job - a hacksaw, a paint knife, a screwdriver, a pencil and scissors. And let’s not forget about the most important tool in the workshop – a hammer! (Where would we be without him).

Let's start tinkering

The main element of our opener is a wooden block. He will work with him from the very beginning. For ease of processing, the author used a vice, as shown in the photo.

We clamp the block in a vice and cut off a 10-12 cm fragment from it for the handle. To make the cut cleaner, it is advisable to do this with a hacksaw for metal with a fine-toothed blade.

Next, cut one end of the finished handle at an angle of 35-45 degrees. We clean the end with a small file or needle file.

It should turn out exactly like this.

From the side of the trimmed plane, mark a perpendicular line. We use a needle file as a ruler and a marker for marking.

We make a cut with a hacksaw to the middle of the block. If the groove is too narrow. It is necessary to flare it with the same hacksaw blade or a painting knife, and finish it with fine-grained sandpaper.

We cut a strip from the plastic canister with a width equal to our bar. Using a painting knife, this work can be done as carefully as possible.

It's time to use the secret weapon - an ice cream stick))

We use it to wedge the plastic tape inserted into the slot made with a hacksaw. We tap it lightly with a hammer for reliability, trying not to split the block. We cut off the protruding remains of the wooden stick with scissors on both sides.

What to do if you don’t have a can opener, corkscrew or garlic press at hand? We tell you how to replace kitchen devices with simple household items.

Mankind invents all sorts of kitchen gadgets to make their lives as easy as possible. But what to do if you don’t have the necessary equipment at hand, for example, at the dacha or on a hike? Fortunately, in most cases, simple household items will help you out.

Can-opener

Remember: do not try to pierce a tin can with a regular knife - firstly, you can cut yourself, and secondly, metal particles may get into the contents. There is an easier and safer way. Take a piece of sandpaper, a file, a stone, a piece of concrete or brick. Turn the jar over and start rubbing the top of it on the rough surface, pressing lightly.

Your task is to grind off the rim that all cans have. The metal is quite thin, so it gives in easily. Rub until the juice drips, then carefully pry the lid with a knife and pull it out or simply squeeze the jar from the sides - the lid will pop out on its own.

Garlic press

The simplest thing is to grate the garlic on a fine grater. But this is not very convenient, and a lot of pulp will remain on the grater. An ordinary kitchen knife, preferably with a wide blade, will help out. Turn it flat and crush the garlic clove on a cutting board. A fork is also suitable for this purpose.

Another way is to crush the garlic together with salt - using a pestle in a mortar or a wooden potato masher. This method is also good because maximum juice will be released from the garlic. And if you need a lot of garlic, the easiest way is to chop it in a blender.

Meat hammer

You can make juicy chops without a kitchen hammer. A regular glass bottle will help. It is better to beat it with the neck rather than the bottom - this way the meat will turn out more tender and airy. You can use a rolling pin.

Another great way is to pound the meat with a kitchen knife. They say this is what professional chefs do. Only the knife should be thick and weighty. The meat should be beaten with the blunt side, not the sharp side.

Knife

It would seem that it is impossible to do without a knife in the kitchen. But it also happens that the knife unexpectedly breaks or was simply forgotten at home. In this case, strong thread (including dental thread) or fishing line stretched between your hands will come to the rescue. Of course, only soft foods can be cut in this way - cheese, sausage, boiled eggs, bread. This trick will not work with meat or lard.

Juicer

You can make juice from delicate berries, such as blueberries or raspberries, using regular gauze. Fold it in 4-5 layers and tie the berries to make a bag. Start gently squeezing it over a wide bowl. Small cells of gauze will prevent seeds and peels from getting into the juice.

In the same way you can make juice from cherries, plums, apricots, and peaches. Before squeezing the juice, you need to remove the seeds from them and, putting them in cheesecloth, crush them a little with a pestle. The same gauze will help you squeeze out apples and pears. The fruits must first be peeled and grated on a fine grater.

Making citrus juice is also very easy. A whole orange or grapefruit, without peeling, remember well in your hands. Then make a hole in it and pour the juice into a glass. An alternative way is to squeeze the fruit halves with your hand, while at the same time helping yourself with a fork - piercing the pulp with it and turning it. This way you will get a lot more juice.

Seed remover

Not everyone knows that you can also remove pits from cherries using an ordinary garlic press. True, not all models are equipped with this function, but only those that have a special round hole for berries.

There is another way to remove the seeds. Using an ordinary plastic syringe, without a needle, of course.

Knife sharpener

Many housewives know what a pain it is to cut food with a dull knife. If you don’t have a special sharpening device at hand, an ordinary ceramic mug or plate will help - but not just any one, but with unglazed, rough edge on the bottom. You need to sharpen the knife on this edge, at an angle of about 20 degrees - first on one side, then on the other. The main thing is to be careful not to cut yourself. You can also sharpen the knife with sandpaper, wrapping it around some hard object for convenience.

Egg separator

There are several ways to separate the raw yolk from the white. The first is to use a toothpick or the tip of a knife to make two small holes in the shell - in the pointed part of the egg and in the blunt one. Hold the egg over the cup - the white will flow out through the hole, and the yolk will remain in the shell.

Another way is to use a slotted spoon or slotted spoon. Crack an egg into it and shake it back and forth over the bowl to allow the white to flow out through the holes.

Well, the most creative option is to separate the yolk using a plastic bottle. Carefully break the egg into a bowl so that the yolk remains intact. Take the bottle and squeeze it a little, and then bring the neck to the yolk and unclench your fingers - the yolk will be drawn in.

Funnel

If you need to pour liquid into a bottle with a narrow neck and don’t have a funnel at hand, you can easily make one from foil. Roll the foil into a cone, trim the tip and insert it into the bowl.

It was called Kuhn Rikon Auto Safety Lid Lifter Can Opener, and it looked very unusual - at first glance, there were no knives that could cut the lid of the can. And indeed, the open cans, and even the lids, looked without the slightest sharp edge (for comparison, the can on the left was opened with a regular opener from IKEA, and on the right - a Kuhn Rikon):

As they say - at least now under the ashtray! Moreover, this opener also left the lid without sharp edges, and with a special side, allowing you to subsequently close the jar so that it did not look like this:

Do you remember what jars of lemon slices in sugar look like from our distant childhood?

And only one problem gnawed at me: this opener cost 1,100 rubles, and this does not include the cost of shipping! You could, of course, look for a similar Tefal comfort opener:

But it also cost about 1,300 rubles, and in fact it was missing everywhere!

Of course, it simply couldn’t happen without our Chinese friends copying something similar. And with this thought, I went to AliExpress again.

And indeed, as it turned out, with a similar mechanism, the Chinese offer a completely wide range of openers for every taste and budget - from 190 to 900 rubles! I decided to go with the cheapest one I found:

selecting the opener Red. It cost me only 194 rubles (three dollars and 20 cents), and the delivery is free:

The track was untraceable, but after a month and a half, I finally received a notification that my parcel was at my post office. It turned out that this is a fairly wide package:

Why this is so - I don’t know, but what difference does it make? Let's reveal. Inside, wrapped in a polypropylene wrapper, lies our bottle opener:

and even tied to some type of instruction:

Let's get it. Here she is, a beauty, from her face:

And from the inside out:

Although the devil can actually tell where her face is and where her back is. The casting is neat, the seams are good, there is practically no flash. In terms of size, the seller promises us this:

Well, yes, clearly. If you turn the handle, then, of course, the length will shorten even more:

Sorry, I won’t measure the weight this time.

Before proceeding directly to the tests, I’ll tell you a little about its mechanism. So, the essence of this opener is that it does not cut the lid from above, but lid rim on the side, then rolling it. Let's take a closer look at the mechanism in the photo:

The point is that the cutting knife (roller on the right) approaches the can from the side, so that the large roller hits the lid from above, and the cutting knife hits the rim of the lid from the side. It looks like this:

After the opener is installed on the can, you need to turn the handle a little, about a quarter of a turn. The cutting roller does not rotate yet, but the roller installed on the lid attracts the side of the can to the cutting knife that remains outside. Those. the rotating roller moves on the axis of the opener towards and away from it. The easiest way to show this is on video:

And only with further twisting of the handle does the roller begin to rotate in the already drawn state. This is what a rotating roller looks like in real life:

And a cutting roller with a roller:

The metal arc, as I understand it, holds the entire structure together; there is no need to rest it on the can.

The seam on the can looks like this:

The cutting roller, pulled from the side to the rim, begins to simultaneously cut it from the side and immediately roll it. By the way, do you know that not only for canned food, but also for the cans themselves there are corresponding GOSTs (one and two, three), regulating everything from the size of the cans to the radius of the sealing seams?

Well, now let's get to the tests. For this, we will use a standard 76-mm caliber can (putting aside the insinuations about turning factories for the production of canned food into corresponding factories for the production of shells), with hard porridge, and also usually used for stewed meats, etc. (it turned out to be slightly smaller in diameter, but in GOST fits):

and a jar of canned fish with a diameter of 103 mm (the actual diameter also turned out to be smaller):

It is good because a) the can is small in height and b) the canned food is in liquid form, and we can see if it will spill when opening the can (by the way, these canned food turned out to be outright disgusting - solid skin and bones).

We are starting to open. First - a stew jar - put a knife on top, a quarter turn of the rotating handle to pull the cutter to the jar, and then rotate:

Unfortunately, the moment of the quarter turn that attracts the knife to the can was not included in the video, and, as you understand, only one take was possible :) And at the end, when the can was already open, I didn’t understand this moment at first and continued to turn the handle of a can opener, so that the can stood still, and the lid was already spinning. Okay, let's see what we got in the end. Here, in fact, is the resulting seam and cut itself:

Let's lift the lid a little to get a better view:

Now let's start opening it :)

We look at the edge of the jar:

Very good, the seam is absolutely blunt, even if you want to, you won’t be cut! And on the lid:

No worse. We eat half, take a photo from above:

In general, everything is great, you can close it with the same lid again. In general, as in the video that I posted above, when I just opened it. Then it will look again like in the first photo:

Of course, the closure is not airtight, not like a plastic lid on a glass jar. But in any case, it is several times better than a lid opened with a regular can opener.

Now let's start opening the silver carp in tomato sauce. Since the height of the can is much smaller, plus the presence of liquid inside, the process is not even twice as complicated. Well, if you consider that I also stood awkwardly so as not to block the camera with my hands... But even despite all these difficulties, the can opener coped with the task perfectly! By the way, here - I didn’t forget to film the initial movement, when with a quarter turn of the handle, the can opener is attracted to the can, but the can does not rotate yet, and begins to rotate after this quarter turn. Yes, and also - since after finishing the cut - the cutting roller is still pulled towards the can, you need to turn the handle the same quarter turn in the opposite direction. In general, watch the video:

During opening, the liquid did not spill, and even such a small height of the can was enough for the rotating handle to rotate more or less normally, only hitting the table a couple of times. Well, let's see what we got. Unfortunately, since everything was quickly eaten, here are photos of the now empty jar:

Only in one place - apparently where my hand slipped off - did I get a small burr on the lid:

Here it is enlarged:

But otherwise, along almost the entire circumference, the cut and seam are very good:

Here it is in macro form:

What else to say? Probably just a short summary.

Pros:

Relatively fast delivery
+ Free shipping
+ Excellent design, ergonomics
+ Good quality of both materials and workmanship
+ Possibility to choose colors
+ Provides a safe, blunt cut on both can and lid
+ Exceptionally easy movement, even fragile women can handle it
+ You can then use the lid to close the jar relatively tightly
+ It is not the can or lid itself that is cut, but the sealing seam, which is then rolled
+ Even if you open a jar of liquid, nothing spills
+ Cans can be used later for anything without fear of cutting yourself
+ Price

Minuses:

Once there was a small burr on the lid
- Placement of the can opener on the can takes some getting used to - it is still a little different from the standard one.

Summary.

This can opener leaves just a WOW effect. I'm not an unimpressed comrade, but in this case I was completely delighted. Never before have I seen someone be able to invent a bicycle that is so superior in its characteristics to its ancestor! Everything is impressive: convenience; the way it works; the result that is obtained. And the seller didn’t disappoint: his delivery is fast and free, and he didn’t mess up the color. In general, this is a must-have product, and I can confidently recommend this opener for purchase - it will come in handy both for yourself and for gifts for relatives on March 8th.