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by giardini 1824 days ago
I doubt it. I have a dishwasher but don't use it. I wash and dry dishes by hand. It takes no more than 10 minutes to wash and dry two persons' dishes and cookware. I often cook and wash dishes at the same time!

But I've been washing and drying dishes since I was a child and my early years of conscripted dish washing were spent learning to optimize washing and drying procedures. So I'm very fast and efficient.

For a family of more than 4 persons, a dishwasher likely is handy though by no means a necessity. In the absence of a dishwashing machine, one person washed and a second dried.

As for the "pre-clean" phase - soak dishes and utensils in a sink or bowl of warm soapy dishwater for 5-10 minutes to loosen/remove most food residue. Then the dishwasher (wo/man or machine) will work properly.

But the true conundrum is this: in all my years of washing dishes both for myself and for commercial firms (college jobs as dishwasher) I have always washed knives - sharp knives. Yet I have never cut myself on a knife or a sharp utensil. I have learned that I can grab a handful of sharp knives from a soap-and-water filled sink blindly and quickly without fear of cutting my hand.

Something is going on that I don't understand: possibly the soap modifies surface tension around the blades and prevents them from penetrating my skin. This happens whether my hands are dry or soaked by hours of dish washing. Any ideas what is happening here?

2 comments

You can firmly hold sharp objects by the sharp end relatively safely; it's the letting go that can be dangerous.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwuQPfvSSlo (Extreme example: At one point in time, people would sometimes hold sharp swords by blade -in the middle of a swordfight - and win!)

To cut something you need sharp object + cutting motion. No cutting motion means no effect.

I say relatively safe; because of course you're putting yourself in a position where you theoretically can get hurt if you accidentally loosen your grip.

That is different: he is pinching the sword with his hands. And FWIW it is far better to have your hand cut by a sword than to suffer a fatal wound.

In my situation I'm grasping a handful of utensils blindly (they're under soapy water), some which are knives. I can pull them up and sort them out w/o damage. Why?

The hand, and the combination of hand + eye, are remarkably facile. But in a suds-filled sink the eye is useless and the hand alone governs.

At 4:15 he also demonstrates full grip, then does a few full power murder strokes (mordhau) while holding the sword that way, and shows his uncut hands after.

Of course, we don't have to live quite that dangerously ;-)

If knives were to instantly cut on touch, blindly groping for them in the suds would be way too dangerous. (And I haven't really ever gotten cut that way either, so go figure)

I get it: you like swords. Well I've played with knives. I've grabbed knives and machetes and other sharp-edged tools. I know how to grab a blade and all that good stuff. There's plenty about swords and knives somewhere else on the WWW.

While washing dish utensils through my life I have observed something I thought was truly surprising and unexplained. Can't we focus on that?

Maaaybe I do like swords. And I mean, who wouldn't want to use that particular video as a reference sometime?

To be fair I honestly did think that that was the part that was mystifying you. Sorry about that.

I guess you're focusing more on the neural-network self-learning going on? Or... what's the interesting part to you?

No idea about the knives, but a huge non-US innovation is a drying rack. Wash the dishes, let them dry, put them away when you have time. If I had to dry them with a rag, I think my opinion would be different.
What do you mean by "non-US innovation"? I'm in the US and use a drying rack. I can't think of anyone I know in the US who doesn't use a drying rack.
People with dishwashers. Oh, wait... there's a drying rack inside the dishwasher!
I mean I am also a person with a dishwasher....
I don't! I wash, rinse and stack items so they are exposed to the air. They begin to dry right away.
Maybe different parts of the country? I’d never seen one until I left the US.