Hey! I may have only heard of the existence of this device when I started reading this thread 45 seconds ago, but now I definitely need one. How could I have known I needed it until knew it existed?
My associates favor these. No one seems to care if the ice is clear.
Here’s some interesting science about drinks, ice, temperatures, etc…
Cocktail Science in General: Part 1 of 2 (cookingissues.com)
I bought this clear ice mold for fun last year. It works exactly as advertised - produces spheres of pretty much perfectly clear ice with minimal fuss. It is a little bit slow, though, about 36 hours for 3 spheres, and takes up quite a bit of space in the freezer. Still, at $85, a much better deal than the presses, and you don’t have to provide a source of clear ice.
(it goes without saying that you can’t go around with bubbles in your ice like some kind of peasant, right?)
Having a big sphere in your roughly cylindrical cocktail glass is novel and does result in a unique experience compared to a normal mixed drink with a bunch of conventional ice cubes.
Might be a fun Christmas gift for someone!
I gave one of my friends this set of glasses and bullet-shaped whiskey stones. He liked them so much he bought and gave me a set.
I have some silicone ice sphere molds that I bought for just $10. It does leave a seam, but I’m not sure why that bothers people. If it does bother you, run it under the sink for a few seconds, it melts right off.
I am not a lawyer; this is not legal advice; you are not my client; I like cold desserts.
Patents are not copyrighted. The whole point of a patent is that you disclose your invention so that others can reproduce it. In exchange, others have to pay you for the privilege of using it, for a limited time. Somebody explaining your patent is free publicity and marketing for you to get royalties from it.
They need better lawyers. There’s no legal protection against reverse engineering. If someone decides not to patent their invention, it’s an accepted risk that someone else might get ideas by using or disassembling it.
That was probably the only arguably legitimate request. Using their trademark in association with something not their product.
That explains the hole in our roof–that overweight satellite must have crashed into it.
And most small inventors or even companies probably shouldn’t bother with a patent anyways. As this fellow (an inventor himself) points out, if your design is successful people will copy it either by using/disassembling it, or following the design you submitted with your patent. You just need to decide how much money and time to waste trying to do anything about it (like manufacturers who spent a few thousand $ to send the threats about this machine which probably got them nothing in return).
The text was something like “Think ice ball makers from companies like XYZ are too expensive? Then make your own for under a tenth the price!” Given that I wasn’t actually selling anything, just providing instructions for my own design, it’s unlikely that any court would find for infringement. Still, you’re right–it was the only claim with even the tiniest shred of credibility, and I didn’t want to push my luck with the hosting site. Besides, I didn’t want to give them any extra visibility, so I was happy to delete the name.
This was not my first cease & desist letter. Lawyers write them up all the time with completely bogus reasoning. The problem is actually with the companies themselves, who rarely think about how harassing the community isn’t doing them any favors.
The first company to send me a C&D actually apologized and sent me some hardware eventually, so that worked out. But then I went to work for their competitor and we ultimately bought them out.
I took “instructions” to mean Dr. S’s instructions on how to machine his home-made press, not work the manufacturer’s press. The question of what might have been patentable remains unknown.
– John Jay Osborne, The Associates
It seems to me such fancy treats could be made & sold quite cheaply if they were distributed through supermarkets.
I have a set of those stones (though mine are stone, not metal) and I was surprised by how poorly they work, even straight out of the freezer. It really reveals how much the cooling effect of ice is a result of the ice melting and the cold water mixing with the rest of the beverage, rather than conduction between the liquid beverage and the solid ice.
No, the problem isn’t conduction–it’s that the heat of fusion of water is so high. Suppose your household freezer starts at -18 C. 1 cm^3 of ice weighs about 1 g. Coming up to 0 C will absorb 38 joules from its heat capacity, and then another 334 joules while melting (372 J total).
1 cm^3 of stainless steel has a heat capacity of about 3.5 J/cm^3-C, or 63 J/cm^3 while going from -18 C to 0 C. I’m being generous here and going by volume instead of mass–SS has a density of about 7.5 g/cm^3. It’s still only about 17% as good as ice.
Even if the ice doesn’t melt, water in any phase still has a significantly higher specific heat than steel.
Yeah, but specific heat capacity is per unit mass, whereas I’m presuming constant volume (since glasses are volume limited). By volume, steel does a bit better since it’s so dense.
So then all we need to do is melt the steel to get the latent heat kicker.
245 J/g, baby!