I can't find any screw bands in South Africa...
First, it is not recommended to reuse the "lids" (aka domes). But I do if they show no signs of gasket damage and if they are not bent or punctured and if they still have a decent "spring" (more castigating comments coming to the canning pariah -- that's me).

So you really need to find a source for new domes.

Second, any place where you can find domes must also carry rings.

Last, ya really need to secure the domes with the rings during any canning event. Firmly, but not with a full-powered twist (some of the contents [ e.g., air, water vapor ] of the jars must escape if the domes are to seal properly with the lip of the jar.) Extremely over-tightened jars may appear to be sealed, but if there was no vacuum created in the process, as soon as the rings are removed the dome easily pops off. (This condition is evident upon inspection of the dome once ya know what to look for). If ya keep the rings on and that happens, dump all of the jar's contents. Because if the dome can just pop off, some nasties likely have found their way into the jar.

After mine have sealed I remove the rings because they just rust and serve no purpose and furthermore can disguise the disclosure of nasties in an improperly sealed jar (a not-properly sealed jar without the ring will usually [ not always ] displace or blow its dome if infected with some bad things -- and it is very obvious).

Reg

Tanyak, I am assuming you have regular canning jars with the 2 piece lids. The lid and the ring.
You need the screwbands or the lids will come off and water will get in the jars and food will get in the canner. Just a mess.
You don't reuse the lids because they already have a dent in them from the first processing. They will have a greater rate of failure. They are only meant for using once and throwing them away.
Again, we are trying to teach the new canners how to do things properly.....

What kind of lids do the smaller jars that you want to use have?

I only buy it with the lids - they don't sell it with the rings. It just the normal lids with the sealing compound.
(I definitely won't use the lids more than once - I can buy lids on their own - just not rings (well only rings for 500ml(1 pint) jars which I don't use. My lids have not come off in the water though - well only 1 in my first canning experiment. I'm trying to attach a photo of what my jars look like but can't figure out how - how do you attach images? . . . The website of the jars I buy is www.consol.co.za - most of the food and beverage companies in SA use their jars. Thank you all!

Here is another recent link that might offer more insight.

Here is a link that might be useful: Lug lids

Tanya, could you give us the product number of the jar and lid you are using? I looked through the Consol website and checked a few, but didn't see anything there I could use myself for home canning, all so far appeared to be designed for commercial processing.

tanyak,

I take it your jars aren't the same size and shape as our standard N.A. ones? Because here all the sizes of jar use the same lid, and I have zillions of extra screw bands I'd be happy to send you.

If the jars you get there have the same-sized lids (as each other), you can

You say you've canned 4 times without screw bands and with no dome lids falling off. How do they stay on while you transfer the jars into the canner, etc.? The only thing holding mine on at that point is the screw band, and the lids would slide off easily with any tiny jostle without them, making the mess Linda Lou describes. They don't seal on with the vacuum till AFTER I take them out of the canner.

But it sounds like you aren't having that problem, so you must have something different about your equipment?

Zabby

tanya,
I looked on the site too, and the 500 ml and 100 ml preserve jars are the only ones I saw that use dome-and-screw-band lid arrangements at all. The others look like lug lids, which aren't usually used for home canning in NA (but as the thread on lug lids says, some market gardeners who have small businesses seem to use them; I am afraid I don't know what the safety issues are).

The size entry isn't filled in for the mouth size (it just says "mm" with no number) on those 500 and 1000 ml jars so I can't tell if they're the same size as our standard or not.

Zabby

Tanyak,
The two piece lids we use look like this below.
Perhaps you are trying to use one piece lids meant for commercial canning and not home use, I don't know.
Is is one piece with threads on the side of the lid and the lid screws on ? If so, they may not have the right kind of sealing compound for home canning. They may not make a vacuum seal in a home canner.
You find the website, then on the top of the page it will show the web address. You have to copy and paste that address in the box below where it says " Optional Link URL". Then you type in the name of the link or a description of it below in the yellow box.
That, or if you can give us the product number along with your link we can help figure out what you are using.

Here is a link that might be useful: Two piece lids and rings.

Tanyak, those are commercial lids you are trying to use. Those are not meant for home canning from what I can see.
Here we have different kinds of special jars and lids for home canning. They are not the same as what the commercial industry uses. The kinds of machines and canners they use are not at all the same as what a home canner would use.

Tanyak - you are having so many problems, and many of them are very real safety issues, with trying to home can. Given the apparent lack of safe-to-use supplies, strange heat sources, available info and experience, and qualified instruction available to you where you live, I strongly suggest you consider giving up on trying to home can for now.

It can be a hazardous practice even here and even under the best of circumstances, so in your situation I am seriously concerned for your safety. Maybe it is just one of those things that honestly cannot be done given what you have to work with.

Otherwise, have you considered contacting UNISA, the University of South Africa and exploring what resources they might have available for you. I see they do have a Colleges of Agricultural & Environmental Sciences that offers online resources and contact info. They might very well be able to put you onto info sources for safe home canning just as our university extension services here offer. It's worth exploring at least.

Good luck.

Dave

Tanyak, The smaller jars use the "Lug" type lid. There is no screw band needed for this type. The "Lug" lids are not generaly used for home canning, but, I use them successfully for jam and jelly.

Put the lid on finger tight before processing. After processing, the center of the lid will have a "dished in" appearence if you have a good seal.

I have not used the "Lug" type lids for anything other than water bath canning, but, see no reason they would not work. Extra care would be needed in filling the jar to be sure that there is not so much product that some might be forced out under the lid while processing.

Gosh, Tanya, I am afraid I don't agree with Dave that the whole concept of canning in South Africa is a a serious safety problem.

But I would be reluctant to can anything other than jams and jellies with those lug lids; a jam isn't going to contain botulism --- the worst that can happen is that it will not seal, or the seal will fail, or it will get mouldy, which you will be able to see if it happens.

For salsa and other things that COULD contain botulism, if it were me, I would stick to the dome-and-screw-band lids, which are made for home canning. They are available from that website in the 500 ml and 1000 ml sizes. Annie's salsa is so good you will want to have at least 500 ml in each jar, anyway!

Just my two cents. I don't think you should be scared off from trying, and I don't believe the North American way of everything is the best and only way. But most of the recipes online and the ones we trade around here assume those methods, and are tested for safety using them, so for risk-free canning you'd want to use them. Of course you make your own decisions about risk. Serious illness or death from being poisioned by home-canned goods is rare. But it DOES happen; there ARE some botulism cases and some deaths every year.

Good luck and let us know how it goes!

Zabby

Have you talked directly to the SA company? It's possible they have a solution that is not detailed on their website.

One thing to note - the lid & screw rings we use here are universal in size. Regular or wide....and they fit any size jar. Are you sure that isn't the case with the SA jars?

Maybe you covered this in another thread, but there has to be a company that would ship your jars with proper lids/rings. May be a little pricey, but once you have them......

One thing to note about the rarity of illness or death is that those stats are skewed by countries that use "safe" processing techniques. Stats by country are more telling....from what I remember Poland has a pretty scary level.

Zabby - I didn't say, at least I didn't mean "that the whole concept of canning in South Africa is a a serious safety problem" - that is far too broad and likely very untrue. But in the current situation it is a serious safety problem for Tanya.

Surely somewhere in SA there are experienced home canners and suppliers. If not SA perhaps somewhere nearby there is a source of reliable info and supplies for Tanyak - thus my suggestion to contact the university. Proper jars are sold throughout Europe if all else fails and while shipping may be high a basic set of supplies and a good book on canning could be a life saver in this case.

But Tanya is clearly inexperienced and she apparently hasn't found any of those reliable sources so far - that much is clear from all her posts - and we here certainly can't teach her all she needs to know in this forum. By trying to help we could easily be misdirecting her because of the simple misunderstandings. We can't even understand how her "5 ring gas burner stove" works or what the canning jars/lids she describes are from the info provided.

Not everything in life can be done equally well everywhere and home canning may be one of those things. So Tanya needs to do some more local research on the basics, get a good book ordered (that alone would solve many problems), contact her canner manufacturer for help with the gauge problems, order a 3-weight set and ignore the gauge, contact the stove manufacturer for assistance with how to use and adjust the stove, contact the glass company and ask for help finding a proper supplier, call or write the university, etc. and make another attempt to find a local source of good information.

I'm sorry but it simply isn't safe to "experiment" with home canning when there are so many uncontrolled variables.

Dave

Thank you so much to all of you - I really appreciate all your help ! Consol has confirmed that their jars are safe for home preserving (they actually have a factory shop where the public can buy jars). They also have a 3rd party producers of lids who have also confirmed that all their lids are safe for home preserving - some of the lids even have pop up features so that you can be sure it has sealed (that's how she explained it - not sure exactly how that works but she's faxing me a price list so that I can see all the options)Once again a big THANK YOU !

The lid tops have an embossed 'button' in the center. These are usually about a 1/2 inch in diameter and raised slightly. Once the jar seals under heat, and is cooling, these 'dimples' will get pulled in by a slight vacuum, and you will hear a 'tink' sound. The result will be a slightly concave dimple, when it was originally a small bump. Once reopened, the sunken dimple will pop back out again.

Very sorry, Dave, I didn't mean to misquote you.

Clearly I'm less pessimistic. I don't advocate ignoring safety rules and experimenting willy-nilly, but it seems to me there is plenty of scope in this situation to work with reasonable expectation of safety even though the context is very different from what we are used to in North America. But we all have our degrees of comfort and I totally respect yours!

Tanya, That's great news. Ken has done a terrific job explaining how the feature on a lid that lets you tell if it's sealed generally works. With a well-designed lid, it is easy to tell. The dimple is slightly "caved in," and when you press it, it doesn't "give" at all as it did before there was a vacuum in the jar.

With your weights for the salsa, you should be ready to go!

Say, what kind of tomatoes do you get there? I grow one variety called Heidi that is from northern Africa, and it's one of my favourits for sauce and salsa --- nice and meaty, good flavour, good producer.

Zabby

We get normal beefsteak tomatoes here and occasionally plum tomatoes. Then of course the small roma tomatoes you use for salads. Unfortunately our best quality fruit and vegetables are exported so quality at supermarkets isn't always great except if you buy at the more expensive stores.

Additinally, if the tomatoes ae grown for shipping someplace else, they are usually picked when underripe. There are even strains of tomatoes that ae very tough skinned, as you can almost use them as baseballs with little damage to the tomato.