My Ball canning lids are a mess...have you had issues with them?

I bought a couple of boxes of Ball lids early summer. Stored in dry pantry. Opened them up today. All were rusty and corroded new in the box.



What a mess! People just don’t care what type of product they produce now.

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Zero issues with Ball lids. I bought mumerous boxes of regular and wide mouth lids back in June. I wanted to make sure we had plenty in case supplies were low later in the summer.

If you get rusty lids, I’d blame it on moisture well after manufacturing.

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They were probably rusty when you bought them. Is there a date on the box?

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What makes me disappointed is that Ball discontinued their Fermentation Lids & Springs. People will pay tens of thousands of dollars for rare Pokémon cards. My Ball Fermentation lids & springs should be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars today :joy:

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Based on your praise, I just looked up some new-old-stock for sale on Ebay and bought a box of 2 that will cost me $26 delivered. Pricey, but is sure looks like a good feature. I have glass weights, but if the jar is crammed full they can slide to the side a bit as things settle during the ferment and small stuff can escape which it seems the springs avoid.

Have you removed the lids from the box and examined them individually? They often look like that for me upon opening the box, but when i separate them, i find that it’s just the brown sealant spashed onto the rim of the lids.

Those don’t look bad. Anyone ever buy the whole sleeve of lids? like were you get several dozen for like $40?

They are great for fermenting everything but shredded cabbage (sauerkraut). But there is a trick with sauerkraut where if you take a large leaf from the cabbage head, put that at the very top of the shredded cabbage, THEN put the spring on top of the cabbage leaf to push everything down and seal it with the lid.

That cabbage leaf trick can be used with the spring with other fermented things that are small, but in my experience with fermenting, I’ve only had issues with shredded cabbage. Most of the other things I ferment are larger (Cucumber, Beets, Onion rings, whole garlic cloves, carrots, ginger, etc)

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@Zone6

I’m with @smsmith . I order cases of them every year and never have any issues. Where did you buy those?

Walmart

Just an update…

Wrote to ball with photos and all. Never got a reply. That was the day after I posted this thread. Terrible service.

It’s more effective to return the merchandise to the seller with the original packaging. You not only get a refund, but it also goes through an established return process. The Walmart store learns that some of their merchandise is possibly defect. Ball could determine the manufacturing lot and add it to their defect data – or perhaps they’ll find it was already a defect lot sold to Walmart at a discount.

I’m trying out a new manufacturer of canning lids, Canning Accessories – Superb Sealing based on positive reviews in a homesteading Youtube series. The homesteader switched to Superb lids after occasional failures with Ball lids.

The problem for me is that occasionally Ball lids don’t seal, or lose their seal after about a month in storage. It doesn’t happen often - about 1 jar in 20, but still not dependable.

Even though I might think I’m treating all the jars the same, my failures could certainly be operator error on my part. It also could be due to imperceptible nicked glass edges that I don’t notice.

The selling point about Superb lids is that they make a loud pop when they seal. Maybe an auditory gimmick- will find out! I hope that doesn’t mean the lids will be impossible to remove!