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Jonas Peeler: Reshaping and Origin Mystery

This past summer we replaced a worn-out vegetable peeler with what was allegedly a high-quality Linden Jonas peeler. It worked quite well, which it should have, given that it cost nigh onto seven bucks, until I recently backed over it with my wheelchair (about which, more later) and smashed it flat.

World+dog having recently discovered the virtues of home-cooked meals, the replacement cost nigh onto ten bucks and, through the wonders of Amazon, came from a different seller, albeit with a letter-for-letter identical description:

Linden Jonas peeler orders
Linden Jonas peeler orders

With a spare in the kitchen, I applied some shop-fu to unbend the first peeler:

Jonas peeler - reshaping tools
Jonas peeler – reshaping tools

Tapping the handle against the bandsawed dowel sufficed to remove the sharpest bends. The final trick involved clamping one edge of the handle to the section cut from a thread spool, resting the Vise-Grip on the bench vise, and whacking the other edge with the rubber mallet to restore the smooth curve around the main axis, repeating the process along the other side, then hand-forming the gentle curve closer to the blade. It ain’t perfect and never will be, but it’s once again comfortable in the hand.

During that process I had plenty of time to admire the identification stamped into the handle:

Jonas peeler - weak emboss
Jonas peeler – weak emboss

Which, frankly, looks rather gritty on an allegedly high-quality product from a Swedish factory.

Compare it with the new peeler:

Jonas peeler - good emboss
Jonas peeler – good emboss

Now, that’s more like it.

The genuine Linden website doesn’t provide much detail, so I can’t be absolutely sure which peeler is a counterfeit, but it sure looks like at least one fails the sniff test. Linden’s site redirects to Amazon through a Google search link (!) that, given the way Amazon works, could result in anything appearing as a valid result:

https://www.google.com/search?q=amazon.com+linden+sweden

As one should expect by now, Amazon’s commingled inventory produces a fair percentage of reviews complaining about craptastic peelers stamped “Made in China” from any of the sellers unearthed by that search.

12 thoughts on “Jonas Peeler: Reshaping and Origin Mystery”

  2. We have the generic supermarketed version of the Jonas peeler, and it has served well for the unknown number of decades since we bought it. No brand, but it just works. Goodenough.

    Hope the wheelchair need is/was temporary. A neighbor just had a serious horse accident (bucked off) with part of the aftermath needing a helicopter flight to the hospital. Not good at all.

    1. We’d been using luck-of-the-draw peelers, too, and upscaled our equipment to see if it made any difference. Which it did, even though we’ve had good cheap peelers, too.

      I’m (presumably) recovering from a pinched lumbar nerve, the treatment being basically “If it hurts, don’t do quite so much of that.” Put a definite crimp in my Quality Shop Time, alas.

      1. Got that t-shirt earlier this year, which gave me sciatia-like symptoms. (Right leg this year; last was left. Sigh.) Protip: if the wall seems to heavy to lift solo, it is too heavy to lift solo. Didn’t have room for mechanical assistance without more thought. Get-r-done has a cost.

        My doc suggested some modifications to the earlier stretches, and I’ve been doing them. Worked, though doing the stretches the way I’m supposed to was hurting my knees. So, modifications to the modifications. “It’s now a matter of fine tuning”, I’ve read somewhere. [grin]

        Good luck with that.

  3. Who could know? However, “Original made in Sweden” is a true statement either way. Even though mine is an Ekco, surprising how long these last, as I’ve never had one where were wear out. Not to mention the simplicity of the design due to the pivoting blade and it’s ability to conform to a surface.

    Ed: Iteratively fixed!

    1. Well played, sir!

      Maybe it’s a machine translation?

      The blade cuts well and the all-steel handle lacks the “soft touch” silicone coating that inevitably turns into snot. Works for me!

      1. I’ve seen that rubber/plastic reaction before as well. Not sure what it is called but it can be annoying. Recent purgings of old equipment showed three good rubber feet and one turned to goo that was resting on something incompatible, never seems to be predictable. Btw, that was supposed to be “wear” and not “where”, how embarrassing to be foiled by the auto correct when I didn’t ask for it.

        1. I can’t link the goo to anything I either do or don’t do, particularly for things left abandoned in place, but it happens so often I wish new widgets had old-school hard cases.

          And fixed! The number of times autocorrect helps is small, but I admit the red underlines help find random typos (apart from homonyms) when proofreading.

          1. I have to update the database by hand from time to time. Spellcheck didn’t believe that Klamath and other Native American words were real. With my tendency to create weird whimsical neologisms, I have to be careful with the red squiggles.

            1. I generally have way too much fun with neologisms as well. I only know English officially but language can be so much fun, especially malapropisms. Your correction of my post seems to burned you too, as it changed it to “were” vs “wear”!

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