Nite Coaster - Motion Sensor Glass Illuminator Review.

 "Great Device" 2009-09-02
By R. Thompson (Texas, US of A)

A great functional device for us old timers. Not sure why the review rating is calling it a "toy" but maybe it is for some. Since I purchased and set it up I have yet to change the batteries. It has worked every time and has been great for me at night. I use it for my water glass and so far spilling a little water on it hasn't hurt. Great product.

Richard

 "GREAT!!! - FANTASTIC IDEA." 2008-02-22
By Kimberly Davis (Missouri)

I love this product. It is great when I get up in the middle of the night or when I am searching for my glasses or water glass. It makes a great gift. I gave one to all my family at Christmas.

 "It works for me" 2010-02-16
By Nee Montgomery (Hollywood)

I was given this as a Christmas present. I like to sleep in a very dark room, and it is nice to have a minimal amount of light when I get up in the night. I do not have it sitting right next to the bed, but rather on a dresser. When I get out of bed and stand, it comes on. Not a startling light, just a glow. I've had it now for 2 months and the batteries are still strong. It does not go off and on by itself, and though I didn't buy it here on Amazon myself, it clearly states that batteries are not included. For me, it's a good idea, and it works well.

 "This is PRICE GOUGING!! Retail is $24.95 on this." 2009-01-08
By Paul Graff (Houston, TX USA)

You can buy this from Beacons (manufacturer) direct for $24.95 + $3 shipping. Brookstone also has it on their website for $24.95.

 "Practical little item." 2010-02-10
By Tallahassee Lassie (Tallahassee, FL)

I bought this as a stocking stuffer for my husband because he always keeps a class of water beside the bed, and as you might guess, every few months it gets knocked over. This is a problem solver. Any time he wants a little light he waves his hand in the direction of the coaster and it's perfect - about 28 seconds of illumination. He's planning on traveling with it. If you set the beam so it hits your approach to the bed it should be great in hotel rooms or on cruises. Just enough light to get back and forth to the bathroom without stubbing your toes or waking your partner.

Calculated Industries KitchenCalc 8300 Recipe Calculator with Digital Timer Review.

 "Best tool for calculating kitchen formulas and recipes!" 2002-10-18
By Robert Angelone (Wall, NJ United States)

I publish Epicurus.com, one of the leading food and travel sites with more than 10,000 recipes. In an average week, I go through more than 200 hundred recipes developing them for our site or our clients. As a restaurant consultant, I scale recipes for clients every day. This calculator has made my life simpler and given me less angst over miscalculated formulae. The device is as simple to use as a normal calculator, but so much better.

No home cook... indeed no professional chef, should be without one of these devices. I've come to depend on it for accuracy, speed and efficiency.

They're far more accurate than the recipe software I've used, easier to work with and far more efficient as I can take this right to the kitchen workstation with me. It fits in my pocket and works like a dream.

An absolute must if you get recipes from cookbooks. Simply wonderful.

 "A necessity for any kitchen" 2005-03-08
By J. Gemmellaro (Daly City, CA USA)

I am a pastry chef in SF. I came across this calculator while in culinary school a few years back. One of the best darn tools I use. Every kitchen should have a calculator, but why not one that will also help with conversions? Get this as a gift for anyone you know who loves to cook.

 "It was a gift for someone and they loved it" 2009-09-18
By A. Decavia (San Francisco, CA)

I bought this as a gift for my girlfriend who is going to school to become a chef. She loved it, can't stop talking about all the things it can do. It is small calculator (3"x4.5") but it's convenient as hell. She keeps it in her purse and uses it for school and for cooking at home. Just look up all the things it can do, cause there's too much to type. Either way it's a great product.



[...].

 "Kitchen Calculator with digital timer" 2009-08-06
By Janet E. Goetz


This is a great tool when your cooking. If you need to make more than what the reciept call for it product does it. I would suggest this to other people.

 "Kitchen calculator" 2010-02-06
By Jo Ann R. Peterson (El Paso, Texas USA)

This is a very helpful tool.This my 2nd time having one. I don't like leftovers and find this very helpful in creating meals with just the right amount of servings.

Uber Goop WHITE Dishwasher Rack Repair w/80 caps Review.

 "Works better than expected - but lots of prep!" 2008-04-07
By T. A. Delzer (Eugene, OR)

I hadn't anticipated the amount of prep that would be required to make a good, long-lasting bond with the vinyl liquid and cap when I purchased this product. BUT! The caps have stayed on absolutely perfectly in about a month and a half of almost daily running of my dishwasher.



PROS:

1) Does what it's supposed to do: they fit on the tines snugly, stay on, prevent rust transfer to dishes, seem to keep rack tines from rusting further . For these reasons alone the kit would get 5 stars easily as far as I'm concerned.



2)the caps also cushion our dishes better than anything I've seen on any factory-provided rack tines. Dishes don't get beaten up by tines but it's nice to get the sense that our dishes are getting gentle treatment after a couple years of scraping and rust stains from the worn tine tips...



CONS:

1) The liquid vinyl dries too quickly. Be sure to get the stuff into the cap and the cap onto the tine within 15 seconds or so or the liquid vinyl will develop a skin and start to clump when you push the cap onto the tine. Not sure how it might affect adhesion but it certainly looks pretty crummy.



2) The liquid vinyl runs out of the cap too easily when you push the cap onto the tine because the cap interior is pretty much the exact volume as the tine itself - there's no room for the liquid vinyl.



We all want the tine to look like it's part of the original rack, no? Well, the drip of liquid vinyl down the side of every tine precludes that possibility. It's not really that noticeable, I'll admit, but still it'd be nice to have a remote possibility of getting a cap on that is perfectly clean.



3) You need more of the liquid vinyl to put all 80 caps on. I put on about 60 caps and used every last drop of the liquid vinyl I could get out of the bottle. AND I didn't use as much of the l.v. as the directions advised per cap. (A lot of the l.v. dried to the side of the bottle - think of the liquid paper correction fluid bottles.)



WISHES:

1) I wish the bottle of l.v. had been made with a rubber cap with a single hole in its center so that the l.v. wasn't exposed to air during its use (and would stay wet). You'd shake up the liquid, turn the bottle over, and slide the bottle onto a tine through the hole in the rubber cap. Then pull the bottle off the tine and the rubber cap pulls off excess l.v. but enough stays on for the cap to adhere well. And it deposits the correct amount onto the tine to avoid the drip down the side every time.



2) I wish the caps had a hole in the top to allow air to escape as the cap was slid onto the tine. When the l.v. starts to come out the hole you quit pushing the cap down. Perfect mount of l.v. evenly deposited throughout the inside the cap and no drips.



PREP I DID:

This is the critical part of putting these caps on, IMO. You want all the rust off the tines and the tines as clean as possible without using water (puts the rust right back on the exposed metal) before you apply the l.v. and cap.



1) Shave off the vinyl on the rusted tines down to the intact steel (maybe up to 1/8" of un-rusted steel is all you'll want to expose).



I used an Olfa Comfort Grip utility/craft knife to do this. You'll need a sharp blade to get the vinyl off. And you'll need a blade you can either sharpen or replace cheaply because the rusted tine will dull and chip your blade. The Olfa is my favorite knife because it's extremely sharp, very comfortable, and the blades snap off every 3/8" inch or so to give you a new tip.



And the density of the tines will probably make it impossible for you to get at the tines, rust, or vinyl, with anything larger than a knife.



2) Remove the rust on the tines.



I had planned to use a grinder with a sanding pad attached but that couldn't be done because of the closeness of the tines to one another. Trying to get the rust off a cylindrical tine with a flat disk without bumping vinyl I wanter to keep on in other nearby locations is a headache if not impossible.



I then tried a wire bristle attachment on my drill - same problem of damaging nearby vinyl I wanted to keep, and it wasn't very quick in getting the rust off the tine either.



I even considered just grinding all the tines down to the intact steel but I still had to shave off the vinyl beforehand (vinyl stinks and is toxic when it melts as it will with a grinder) and I didn't want to potentially make the tines so short that they wouldn't hold up larger plates (unlikely but I didn't want to bother with that risk).



So, after wasting too much time wondering how I could make the job go faster and wishing somebody had made a hollow drill bit that could grind tines I just gave up and did it the old fashioned way: small pieces of sandpaper and lots of elbow grease. A real pain but it did the job most accurately (with the least collateral damage if you will) and most effectively.



I suppose you could consider using the Rust-Oleum spray paint that binds with rust to stop further rusting but I was a little wary of the potential for the paint to not provide a good gripping surface for the l.v. or to flake off the tine itself.



3) Clean the dust off the tines.



I just vacuumed with a shop-vac and then wiped clean with a dry, clean rag (old t-shirt).



I've read that 100% isopropyl alcohol will not leave any residue and doesn't cause rust on steel like water will so that could be used in addition to wiping and vacuuming.





If I recall correctly all the prepping I did took me about 3 hours. Maybe more. A LOT of work for the job. Certainly MUCH more than I had expected to have to do to get the job done in a manner I figured would last the longest.



In sum, the product reviewed works as advertised and seems top-notch so far. But just don't expect a quick and easy fix if you're the "do it once and forget about it" type like I am.







FOLLOW UP after 10 months of daily use:



The caps are PERFECT! Man, I couldn't be more pleased with replacement tips. No crumbling, no cracking, no crazing, no hardening, no coming off. Nothing. Look like I put them on yesterday. No joke.



Despite the fear of screwing something new up I think I'll probably even put these tips on the unused tines of the new racks we'll get when we have to replace our current washer. And, hey!, NO PREP!

 "Scott S." 2008-04-27
By Scott Stumpf

Good product. Worked as advertised. Minor difficulty in getting the glue to "drip" into the caps before you stick them to the rack posts. The easiest way we found was to squeeze the cap closed around the middle, place the glue at the opening, and then release the cap slowly to draw the glue into the cap.

 "GREAT PRODUCT, EASY TO USE" 2008-05-31
By Journeynut (chesapeake, va USA)

I ordered this because my dishrack had some end prongs that were rusting.

What appealed to me was the caps that came with the product to put on the end prongs of the dishrack. These really solve the problem and cushion the dishes.

The application of the caps is easy. If you find the glue is drying too fast, put the brush back in the bottle, roll it between your hands a few seconds (like you would nail polish) and keep going.

I also sometimes applied the glue to the end prongs themselves and inside the rubber CAP (both) while I was applying the caps.

All caps have stayed put, my dishrack looks brand new and no more rust!

Great product. Easy application. And it is a bargain.

 "Works great but...." 2008-02-29
By tmagent (San Diego)

This stuff works great but make sure you count how many pins you're going to need. I under-estimated and had to place another order which arrived promptly. This stuff works much better than I expected and it's very easy to apply. A little advice though....after you've done a few pins or touch-ups, wipe off the brush stem with a Kleenex or something to keep it from getting gunked up. I highly recommend this product.

 "Dishwasher rack repair kit really works!" 2007-09-14
By CT Reader

The tips on my dishwasher rack began to rust after the dishwasher was only a few months old, and the rust was getting all over my dishes. The repair kit arrived quickly,was easy to use, worked great and my problem is solved. Much, much cheaper than replacing the rack. Great product!

Smith Abrasives 10-Second Knife and Scissors Sharpener Review.

 "Down 'n Dirty" 2005-12-28
By M. Jones (Fresno, CA United States)

This sharpener will put a sharp, if technically inferior, edge on your blade. What does that mean? To use it you drag your knife through the sharpener a couple of times and the carbide scrapes a new edge onto your knife. The job is done in about 10 seconds and off you go to slice your tomatoes. However since this is not a carefully honed edge it will not last as long as one that is. The sharpener is so easy to use that I don't mind having to resharpen more frequently, as opposed to my other sharpeners that put a nice edge on a blade but are a huge pain to use.

 "Knife sharpner" 2008-09-07
By Christopher G. Conrad (Green Bay)

Best knife sharpner I have ever seen or used. So easy and quick to use.Very good price as well. I have given one to every one in my family.

 "best bang for the buck" 2009-07-19
By Robert Hoffman (Fleetwood PA. USA)

I purchaced this sharpener and used it on a few knives that never seemed to get sharp and with in a few swipes they were razer sharp. Very easy to use. I want to buy about 12 more for christmas gifts.

 "One Of My Best Buys" 2009-10-26
By W. Dorland (Canada)

These things are easy to use and do a really good job. I've had one for years and it works as good now as it did when I bought it. I bought one for each of my family members as a stocking stuffer. They all have had great success with this item.

 "Saves time but not metal" 2007-04-25
By Scott Burright (Laramie, WY USA)

I haven't had much success or ambition when it comes to sharpening knives on stones or sandpaper. I've read numerous articles and watched numerous videos on how to sharpen knives, and I've made a few attempts, but I still haven't got the knack. I've even heard conflicting advice. One master chef says it's easy to sharpen your own knives on a stone, and another says that chefs send their cutlery to a professional for sharpening.



I often find myself fresh out of time and patience for all this fuss, and so I have resorted to various cheap gizmos to do the work for me. This one actually works. As you run it over your knife blade, you can feel the resistance as it hogs off steel and forms a new edge. When the resistance is gone, typically after 5-10 light strokes, that's your signal that the carbide V has done all the shaping it's going to do for now. There is no guesswork.



It puts a nice utility edge on a blade. How sharp and durable that edge may be depends on several things, such as the blade's hardness and edge geometry. It's nowhere near glassy smooth, but that's OK, because the nearly invisible snaggletoothed "micro-serrations" help the knife bite into most materials.



The downside is that it does hog off material. It'll eventually wear out any knife you use and sharpen constantly. If you do happen to be a chef, for example, using this thing means that your favorite knife is not going to last for years. But most chefs probably figure out how to keep their knives in good shape fairly early in their careers. And I'm not a chef. Even my favorite knives get relatively light use, and one of those is an $8 Old Hickory butcher knife. So I'm not too worried about the loss of steel.



I do have knives that I like too much to run through this thing. Anything with a convex grind seems particularly ill-suited to it, although I could be wrong about that. Still, it's great for whacking a quick edge onto the average knife, and I use it more than any other of my gizmos.



AccuSharp has a similar device that gets high praise, but it's harder to find. In fact, I bought one and promptly lost it and have just not got back to the one place I know that carries it. In any case, the carbide V sharpener concept definitely has its uses.

Total Chef TCCSF-02 Stainless-Steel 2-Tier Chocolate Fountain Review.

 "chocolate fountain" 2010-05-25
By Rumari Torres

We used it for my daughter's 13th birthday party and her and her friends loved it. It worked wonderful . It didn't give us any problems.

 "CHOCOLATE FOUNTAIN" 2009-02-24
By Barbara Grams (CALIFORNIA)

For the price, it is a great little fountain. We previously had a much larger one, but the problem was it took over 5 pounds of chocolate just to keep it going. This one is so easy to use and takes about 2 pounds.

If you need more it is very easy to quickly add more chocolate. It's a good buy but don't expect it to be large. It does the job for small parties.

 "for a wedding" 2009-08-20
By Sandra K. Brancato (Jacksonville, Fla. USA)

I have not use my chocolate fountain yet I bought it for my Son's wedding in October.

 "Really disappointed" 2010-02-24
By nana cathy (savannah, ga)

Bought the machine with hopes of using it for two weddings. Luckily, used it first for my granddaughter's baptism. The machine was noisy, but worked so-so. Several weeks later, decided that we needed to try it again before the weddings. Even noisier and then quit working completely. Threw it in the trash and ordered a different machine from a different company.

 "thought it was ok....then realized it was junk" 2010-08-12
By M. Hanshaw (West Virginia)

Bought this for a baby shower I was hosting for my sister. It was a little noisy, but that was ok, didn't expect much for the price. It worked fine for the shower except the heater didn't seem to get as hot as needed to keep the chocolate a smooth consistancy. I pre-heated the chocolate and it flowed beautifully and worked great. After about an hour into the party the chocolate seemed to start cooling down and getting thicker. Had to stop it and return the chocolate to the microwave to heat again. This worked fine for the remainder of the shower.

After being in storage for a few more months, I took it to a banquet for my daughters cheerleading team. Soon as I started setting it up on the table one of the other parents told me she had bought one exactly like mine but hers had only lasted until the second use. Jokingly I told her this was the second time I had used mine so we would see if mine was junk too, well guess what? the same thing again, after about 30 minutes I had to reheat the chocolate to get it smooth enough to flow properly (even added more oil to thin it out), after being on and running for about an hour the motor quit, just completely died!!!! The heater was still on, the light was still on, you could even feel the motor trying to turn the auger, but nothing!!! Turned it off for a while to see if it was just overheated and let it cool down but when I tried turning it back on... Nothing! It's not a purchase I expected to last forever, but I sure didn't expect it to be junk. (And of course it's past the 90 day warranty) I just suggest if you intend to buy this brand you may want to run it every few weeks just to make sure it's going to last before the warranty expires. According to these reviews and previous owners comments, this brand only last for a couple uses.



September 2010- I need to update my previous review. All the information I wrote in this review is correct, but after complaing so much to my husband about what happend to this fountain, he took a few things apart, took pliars and manually turned the thing that the spiral sits on to raise the chocolate to the top and now it's working again. I havn't used it yet for a party so I'm not really sure how long it will work again, but for now it's working.