Tea Knowledge & Friendship
I think I should try it a second time. When I used baking soda the first time (on a fake teapot) it did not do much to the stains. Maybe these stains were not from tea. The picture was from the first page. I thought that this is the normal amount for you to use. Good to know that it should work with less.
Baking soda is Sodium Bi- carbonate, I am using Sodium Per-carbonate, not the same thing!Mark-S wrote: ↑Sat Mar 07, 2020 4:22 amI think I should try it a second time. When I used baking soda the first time (on a fake teapot) it did not do much to the stains. Maybe these stains were not from tea. The picture was from the first page. I thought that this is the normal amount for you to use. Good to know that it should work with less.
I accidentally used it before.Oh, sorry, I misread your last sentence.
A bit of googling quickly revealed that natrium is the name of sodium in many languages, and was probably previously used in English and French too as a name for sodium, though that old name has fallen out of use. The chemical symbol for sodium (Na) hints to this.
Nothing to be sorry for! Misunderstandings often result from incomplete knowledge on both sides of the discussion, and therefore shared opportunities to learn, masquerading as disagreement on facts. I certainly learned something new here!
Your process looks really good and glad to see the decoration wasn’t affected. When you say boil, you mean simmer right? Boiling can potentially damage the pot from the vibration, simmering is must safer.Mark-S wrote: ↑Sun Mar 15, 2020 4:55 pmI cleaned the pot now. Sodium Percarbonate has not damaged the decoration. This is what I have done:
1. Put the pot into filtered water for two days
2. Bring the water to boil, add two teaspoons of Sodium Percarbonate to it (for small cooking pots I would only use one) and let it cool down
3. Clean it with a sponge (maybe was not necessary though)
4. Boil the teapot in fresh water for about 30 minutes and let it cool down again
I use unscented laundry detergent, plus before using a towel for protection, I’ll pre-soak it in very hot water a few times to remove any remaining detergent. I also don’t use boiling, or even continuously simmering water in hot pot with percarbonate, don’t think it is necessary. I simply place very dirty stinky teapot inside a Pyrex container, place a few spoons of powder (varies with teapot size and dirt level) inside teapot (outside if very dirty there), then fill to cover teapot with boiling water, cover with glazed dinner plate, and wait until water cools off. All this happens outside to avoid vapors being inhaled. I should update my original cleaning guidelines post to add these details.faj wrote: ↑Sun Mar 15, 2020 6:30 pmI have cleaned pots a few times with percarbonate.
The first time, I used a towel, but it left a smell. It was not a foul smell, more like a slightly chemical scent from brand new fabric that has never been washed, though the towel I used was very clean and not new at all. I re-boiled the teapot and it went away.
Since then, I have simply used no protection, but I heat the water slowly and stop the heat just before boiling starts, not leaving the teapot to simmer. The teapots I have cleaned had only minor tea stains, and the stains went away entirely without any need for simmering.
However, I would be curious to know if others have had problems with smells when putting fabric in the water.
some people seem to think the previous owner's gunk is beneficial to their own tea experience and call it seasoning... apart from that, old pots should be cleaned to make sure they are really old.
