Could vintage in-sink garbage disposers really do bones?

[scoots]

A claim I see all the time in older (1960's) ads for garbage disposers is that they virtually eliminate the need for a garbage pail - that the unit will grind "big bones, even corn husks..." and flush it down the pipes (Yikes!)

Was this true of older units?

Can modern units do this today?

Is there a reason why this is no longer claimed or encouraged in advertisements?(when such products are advertised at all.....)

 

[washerboy]

bones

We lived in an early 1950's ranch style house for a few years when I was growing up. The kitchen was all in pink and had the GE wall refrigerator, wall oven and stove top. I remember my mother putting chicken and steak bones in the disposer..it took a few minutes for them to be ground up. I do not think she ever put corn husks or cobs. I'm by no means a disposer expert but I don't think the ones we have today will handle those kind of solids. I've often wondered if it doesn't have some thing to do with the cities waste water system..I would think bones and husks would be difficult to break down. We had a neighbor lady that swore by putting the neck of a coke bottle in the disposer and turning it on would sharpen the blades. Of course my mother wouldn't allow me to try that..go figure..

 

[stevet]

"for the way it's made"

I think the major reason why they could make the claims they did was because of the way disposers were built back then. It had more to do with how they did the grinding which is very different from what we see now. Back then,they used a hardened grinding ring that had segments that ground up waste around the circumference of the grind chamber and had varying ways of propelling the wastes against those rings. The waste would be forced against the ring by raised, fixed and hardened areas on the grinding plate and there would be other features on the disc that would also break down the wastes. National Disposers and their Kitchenaid
kin were of similar designs and could handle just about anything you threw down the drain.

I purchased a National Disposer from our resident Disposer guru, Wes aka Volsboy and it also has the high bulk cutter right in the middle to help rip apart veggies and stuff like that. Hobart still uses that design in the commercial disposers they sell today.

Whirlpool did not continue selling the KA designed disposers and sold it to Viking. I read recently, but may be wrong, but they have stopped building them as well.

I replaced a Dayton disposer built by ISE with a KitchenAid in my Mom's house and could not believe the difference in performance after installing the KA machine. Nothing clogged it and if it should happen to jam, the WhamJam Breaker button made quick work of the jam. The auto-reversing feature should be standard on every disposer.

Give Wes a shout. He can fill you in on more different brands and maybe post some pics or literature that shows the features of the other manufacturers' offerings thru the years.

 

[rockland1]

National Disposers

Steve your completely spot on. I sold National Disposers and they were the best! Never heard any complaints.

 

[turquoisedude]

I guess the closest I got to a 60s disposer was at a friends house where the original set of 1965 Frigidaire appliances (all turquoise and including a washer/dryer set) were still installed and running.  I remember asking if they put bones down it and they said no, but that could have been because the cutters were getting dull (this was in 1980).

 

I've always wanted to get my mitts on an older National or KitchenAid.   I grew up with a Kenmore (ISE), bought a Kenmore (ISE) for my first house, then got a SinkMaster (Anaheim) when we moved to the city.   They could all handle some bones (not a big ham bone or t-bone steak bone though).  The instructions for all of them said 'thou shalt not dispose of corn husks' but they could handle cobs.  

 

Doesn't Viking (the folks who make the high-end ranges) use the old KitchenAid disposer design now?  I thought they looked very KA-esque a few years ago when I glimpsed at one at a home show... 

 

 

[jeffg]

Even going back to the 1960's I don't recall a time when our garbage disposers didn't handle just about anything, short of metal. And sometimes even metal.

 

[rp2813]

". . . sometimes even metal."

When we found a NIB Maytag FC-5 disposer back in 1990 during the kitchen remodel at our previous house, we grabbed it for a whopping $29 at a major appliance dealer's clearance room.

 

Maytag claimed that it would even grind nails.  We didn't try that, but the very first thing we did try after it was installed was a whole apple, dropped in from about a foot above the sink. 

 

The disposer was very quiet.  All we heard was the running water being sprayed around inside it before dropping the apple.  All we heard after dropping the apple was a minor thump and a second or two of silence, then the same water sound as before.  Maybe it was just an apple, but we were impressed with how quickly it was disposed of.

 

When I was a kid, the mom of family friends who lived in an early '60s house with GE kitchen used to put everything including bones down their disposer.  We never did that here.  The sewer pipes were from 1927 (they still are) and the house never had a disposer until the mid '60s.   The pipes clogged quickly after the disposer was installed, so ever since it's only been used to process stray scraps and bits of food that for whatever reason weren't caught in the strainer.  I think the existing disposer is the third one, a Kenmore from the 1985-90 range.

 

I don't have a problem with scraping plates into the kitchen waste basket.  It sure beats crawling under the house and snaking about 50' of sewer piping.

 

 

 

[norgeway]

As with everything else..

The old models are much better than the new!..

 

[combo52]

Food Waste Disposers

Good thread guys, Yes any decent disposer will grind most bones, corn cobs and much more. The best disposers today are the high end ISEs. Viking did stop building the old National-Kitchenaid style disposers about 5 years ago and now has ISE building their units.

Even if you have a septic system a disposer will cause no problems even with bones, corn cobs and any other organic waste, in fact a disposer will help most septic systems work better.

 

[tolivac]

I go along with Wes and other guys-the OLDER disposers were better built and more effective than the new.Used to use an ISE Evolution" disposer-took the thing FOREVER to shred stuff-replaced it with a Maytag I bought from Wes---MUCH better!!!!You can grind corn cobs in most disposers-but will take a long time-better to save those for the compost pile garden shredder or the trash can for the trash truck.The trash truck can be considered the ideal "disposer" it will take almost anything you can throw at--or in it!!!

 

[tomturbomatic]

KitchenAid used to advertise their cast iron grinding chamber. I liked the Magic Magnet start, a variation of which is used in my great Maytag batch feed that is 22 years old.

 

[revvinkevin]

Not vintage but..... I ordered a new ISE yesterday.

 

 

About a week ago I got under my sink for something and noticed it was wet under there.   Not good.   I discovered the case (?) of the disposal had corroded and was leaking when running water in it, but specifically when running the disposal.   Oddly, no leaking with the dishwasher draining into it.

 

After spending a few hours researching new garbage disposals yesterday, I decided on this ISE Evolution Essential 3/4 HP unit from Amazon for $200 (free shipping).  It's not the TOL model ($300+), but I didn't want a cheapo model either.   I also decided I didn't want one of those high rpm units that sounds like a vacuum cleaner when it's running.   This one turns at 1725 rpm.   It's also supposed to be pretty quiet.

 

The old one was in the house when I moved in 15 years ago and has had no problems until now.   I don't know what brand it is yet (it's still installed), but it's a 1/3 hp model.

 

Kevin

 

 

[perc-o-prince]

"...in fact a disposer will help most septic systems work better."

Try to tell that to the grand pubahs who wrote the regs for our town (all septic- no sewer). We're not supposed to have any disposers installed. While there's one upstairs, there isn't one downstairs, where most of the food action happens. Every once in a while, little bits of leftovers will get, literally, flushed away.

Chuck

 

[yogitunes]

just keep in mind when replacing your disposers, if your dishwasher drains into it, remove the plug before installing the hose.....

I had two incidents this week for that very same reason....

I love the replies, "Just bought a new disposer, and now the dishwasher is on the blink!"...

 

[dustin92]

Our disposer (probably less than 10 years old, Menards special 1/3 hp) does just fine with chicken bones, in fact I ground up about 15 leg bones after dinner tonight (dinner for 6), and it did fine. Noisy, yes, and it took a bit, I fed them in 1 or 2 at a time, but they didn't end up in the trash for the dog to go through. About the only thing I don't run down it is banana peels (and pork/beef bones). Most of the time, the disposer is very quiet, the only noise is that of food being ground up. To run the disposer empty (or by accident, the disposer switch is directly next to the kitchen light switch!), all that is heard is a low hum from under the sink.

 

[thomasortega]

I have an ISE evolution Excell and honestly, i never worried about anything.

I throw everything in it, from banana feels to corn hobs and bones.

The only thing I noticed it takes longer is mango. but anyway, i just let it there and forget. in one or two days (the following operations) it's all gone.

 

[retro-man]

RE: garbage disposals. If after running a disposal and not everything seems to go away or gets off balance, simply add a tray of ice cubes along with the water and turn it on and it cleans out the remaining debris and runs smoothly after.
Jon

 

[bwoods]

smells

I grind everything but the kitchen sink, ha. Corn cobs go down fine, the only thing I don't grind is corn husks. They take forever and are more pain than its worth. Often in my ISE I will have a ball of corn silk left in the machine when I'm done.

That's a good idea Jon, about the ice. That would be good way to clean out smelly machine. I haven't had as many disposals as Wes, but I have had had an uncountable number. The only ones I ever had an odor problem with were the Annaheim Manufactured units (SinkMaster, New GE's, Franke, and a host of other names.) It's been a few years since I've had an Annaheim unit so I don't know if they ever corrected the problem.

Annaheims grind very well, but they used a plastic detergent shield in the lower grind chamber. Bone bits, etc. would scratch this and bacteria would grow in there and phew...ooftah. So I was always running bleach down the unit to freshen things up. Anyone have an Annaheim unit now and have this problem? Just curious if they ever changed that.

Never had an odor problem with a vintage GE, Maytag, ISE (new or vintage), pre-ISE Viking, Universal Waste King or Westinghouse.

By the way, Viking no longer manufacturers disposers. They bought the design rights for the original Hobart KitchenAid designed disposer (with the Wham-Jam breaker ) and manufactured it themselves. Then they gave up self manufacture and contracted ISE to do it for them, but kept the same basic design. As of last year they quite the disposer market altogether. Too bad.

Right now I have a 1991 Sears (ISE) batch-feed in the main kitchen and a GE Series wound "Pirahna" in the kitchenette. I found the Sears on Craigslist. It was NOS and had never been opened. It is a top of the line batch feed model. I bypassed the cover start switch and use it like a continuous feed powered by the wall switch.

But the nice thing about the older batch feed models was that most of them had a much deeper and larger grind chamber than their continuous feed counterpart. Most corn cobs I don't have to break in half first because they fit right down there, as do chicken legs bones, etc.

In my units with the shallower grind chambers, sometime a long chicken leg or cob will slightly stick out of the top and twirl around and splash until the unit gets it ground enough to fully pull it into the chamber. So usually I broke cobs in half to stop the splashing. But it's really cool now just to drop the whole cob straight in. I did add a splash guard as batch feeds don't come with, or need one.

 

[petek]

We had some model Insinkerator in the house growing up that could pretty much take anything. Here's our food waste disposer