Found an old sieve with an interesting repair

My son sent me this photo as soon as he arrived home from work yesterday, raided from the heap of scrap at the renovation site he's been at today. He said there were some interesting silver platters there too, but they were in a different heap and he wasn't sure if they were being thrown out or not.



I recognised it as old fashioned sieve, and asked how fine the mesh was. And this was his response...



That's a lot finer than the ones I'd seen still for sale in the agri shops, which are for sorting and cleaning seeds. I guess this one was for sieving flour for baking. I was fascinated by it and gave him strict instructions to bring it with him next time he came over. Being a good lad, and bearing in mind he wasn't home toooo late today, he came straight over and presented it to me.

This was the most fascinating thing to me though...



Apart from the way that it looks like an overgrown paramecium, just the fact that they would repair a sieve with a patch appealed to me.

Here's the view from the back.



I can absolutely imaging some poor lad accidentally bashing his mother's sieve onto something and gouging a hole out then getting scolded soundly and clipped around the ear and told to take it to his father and get him to teach him how to fix it. I may just have an overactive imagination though...

Here's a close up to show the construction...



I wonder what sort of wood it is that can be bent around like that?

And here's a view of the whole thing, just in case it's of interest to anyone.



I'm not sure where I'm gonna put it, or what I'll ever do with it. But I'm keeping it! Austin said he saw it there a few days ago but didn't think I'd want it. It seems my son knows me better. Or else Austin knows how much I'm inclined to fill the place up with clutter and chaos and didn't want to add to it.

I wonder if it's the one the old woman gave to Hansel and Gretel to fetch water in...

Oh, and here's a photo of my one, bought new from an agri shop, in a size just right for cleaning the galega cabbage seed.

Ooh, good find! As for the type of wood, I think most wood can be bent like that if cut thin and then steamed... Here is the Swedish Wikipedia page for the technique. There is an English version (Heat bending of wood) but the pictures aren't as good...

Burra Maluca wrote:I can absolutely imaging some poor lad accidentally bashing his mother's sieve onto something and gouging a hole out then getting scolded soundly and clipped around the ear and told to take it to his father and get him to teach him how to fix it. I may just have an overactive imagination though...

Sulking in his room like, "When they invent the internet, everyone's gonna hear about this :( "

i wonder if that is for draining the whey out of cheese- that mesh seems too fine for flour, and the (awesome) fabric patch would make sense in that context.
I would love to find stuff like that!

I'm curious, Burra, your new shiny one you got from the shop, what is it typically used for there in Portugal? It reminds me of a Chinese steamer, and it's much smaller than the contraptions we usually use here to separate out beans or peanuts from their shells/skins, or to sieve out stuff.

Tereza Okava wrote:i wonder if that is for draining the whey out of cheese- that mesh seems too fine for flour, and the (awesome) fabric patch would make sense in that context.
I would love to find stuff like that!

Oh now that makes sense! Almost everyone around here made cheese. Even this house, which was just a three-person family at most, had cheese-making equipment still lurking around the place.  I'll try to find the photo of the cheese hoops, complete with the incredibly pink kitchen wall. This whole place was decorated by someone who obviously loved pink....

I'm curious, Burra, your new shiny one you got from the shop, what is it typically used for there in Portugal? It reminds me of a Chinese steamer, and it's much smaller than the contraptions we usually use here to separate out beans or peanuts from their shells/skins, or to sieve out stuff.

Well they're only sold in agricultural shops so I don't believe they are for steaming. And they come in various grades, so I think it has to be for different sized seeds or grains.

As for size, mine was the smallest one available. They come in quite big sizes too!

I did find this one online, which claims it's for centeio, ie rye.



And when I searched that site, I also found another one which says it's for corn and looks very similar to mine. It's hard to judge the scale though...

Wow that is indeed a very pink wall. All of that could be my auntie's house (pink walls, cheese forms and all).
I love that your strainers are made with coils. Ours are basically hardware cloth, but always in a hula-hoop sized thing, unless you're using them to grade coffee beans (or other beans, I suppose) and then they're square.
These are the kind of thing I have a lot of, I use them for drying herbs, winnowing out grains from shells and skins, and sometimes sieving compost. These ladies are using them to dry out their coffee beans.

Ah and I love that it's called a crivo (we call it a peneira)-- separated by a common language, as it were, lol.

I use a seed-seive with a bunch of interchangeable screens: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0946BX45M but I can see how dedicated ones would be easier in some regards.