Stirrers commonly have a short and brutal life; most are put into hard daily use stirring coffee until broken and discarded. It is only the collector who will carefully preserve a Stirrer for the benefit of our children and their kids and so on.

Often the stirrectomologist is presented with a stirrer in poor condition, often misbalanced, sheared, flanged, chipped, worn, or seized. Or even snapped. The best way to deal with these is to wang them. However if the stirrer is a rarity, it is probably worth repairing. The photograph opposite shows a stirrer before (1) and after (2) a professional repair. Note how the repair is almost invisible to the naked eye.

Beware of illegal cut and shut examples (see photo) which aren’t worth nowt, and can be extremely dangerous to use. These are made by attaching two different broken stirrers together and flogging them on to dimwits. I own four of these.

Counterfeit stirrers are becoming a global problem as more and more are being produced and shipped. Some of these fakes are very good quality and can be difficult (but not impossible) to distinguish from a genuine one.

Example 1:

Can you tell which is the genuine and which is the fake between stirrer 1 and 2?

Answer:

Stirrer #1 is obviously the genuine article, it has a constituent phenolic resin index of 0.42 (made by craftsmen in Dumfries), whilst stirrer #2 is considerably higher at 0.67 (made in a slum in Hebden Bridge), leading to the blandishment seen in the carapace area. Poorer quality materials are often used, with the plastics filled out with cheap materials such as chalk, spacedust or sunny delight.

Example 2:

Can you tell the difference between stirrer 3 and stirrer 4? Send your suggestions to the unusual address or praps on our forum, it's up to you.

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