I've always been skeptical about dishwashers damaging stainless steel cutlery.  On the other hand, I've seen them strip the finish off wood, and destroy the "patina" on bare aluminum bakeware.  So I'm keeping a bit of an open mind.  

Of course, I learned those lessons before I finally figured out that I could get pods cheaper than powder.  The pods have a lot less total volume; I'm guessing they rely less on PH brute force.

I stopped using powder when liquids came out, I hated having to scrape undissolved powder out of the dispenser. I just drop a pod in the bottom of the washer, I seriously doubt they do anything like promised, release the prewash, then detergent and then the finish? Yeah, right, the gel pod skin dissolves and dumps it all. The other claims are just marketing. I do squirt some "Finish" in the other dispenser it does help eliminate spotting, being a wetting solution, it breaks surface tension so water and detergent actually make contact with grease and the dishes themselves.

Your observation is right, pods work much better than powders or liquids.

Frosty The Lucky. 

I recently encountered a video channel called “Ask An Appliance Repair Professional” or something like that, from which I learned a couple of interesting things. 

The first is that if you use detergent pods and have a dishwasher with a pre-rinse cycle (as most do these days), don’t put the pod in the bottom of the washer. The pre-rinse — which is designed to soak and spray off food residue in preparation for the wash cycle— will dissolve the pod, and there won’t be any detergent left for the wash proper. Instead, put the pod in the detergent dispenser, which should open at the right moment in the cycle. 

The second thing is that most modern dishwashers have a sensor that measures changes in the turgidity — that is, the amount of suspended material — of the water in the machine. In the pre-rinse cycle, this allows the machine to sense when the soaking and spraying has done its work and it’s time to move on to the wash cycle. If you rinse your dishes off before you put them in the dishwasher, the sensor can’t evaluate the turgidity properly, and the pre-rinse cycle can’t do its job effectively. Perhaps counterintuitively,  This means that rinsing dishes before putting them in the washer makes the machine less effective, and your dishes don’t get as clean. 

Regarding rinse aids like “Finish”, these don’t  really make the wash more effective. What they do is get the water off the dishes quickly at the end of the process, so that there won’t be any water spots or mineral residue on them (especially the glasses). What *does* make the wash more effective, however, is detergent with enzymes, which help break down the food residue more quickly and completely. 

I can go along with putting the pod and softener in the dispensers, I've never noticed a difference and I actually look to see if the dishes are clean out of the machine. But I listen to our's nightly and have never noticed a difference between intensity or duration between the cycles. Well, prewash wetdown lasts maybe 30 seconds.

The one difference I noticed early on is without scraping and rinsing the dishes do not get as clean.

The industry invested in selling appliances tend to take poetic license with how well they work sometimes making no sense. Measuring turbidity for example, If there is no dirty suspended in the water the dishes are clean. No? If I thought an extra rinse cycle were necessary there is a setting for that.

Lastly the above ADvise hasn't changed in the 30 years since we bought our dishwasher. 

Frosty The Lucky.

We're on tremendously hard well water here, so the bloody soap door keeps getting build up on it and jamming, usually before anything else makes trouble. We use the scale removers once in awhile, but I don't think the soap dispenser is detachable, so it's been a major problem. Can do a vinegar soak, but you have to take the door apart. Don't think I can use CLR with the septic.

Back to the metal topic for a moment - that 1862 ordinance manual the guy wanted help with the taps and dies on the other day discussed Japanese varnish in the paint section and included a recipe - but it's a knockoff. So went searching a bit - the japenese of course use urushiol saps to do their resin, like in the kintsugi I mentioned one time (I still need to get back to that), but Americans couldn't figure it out (or maybe they didn't want to process poison oak?) so they made copies using shellac or copal and then polished the heck out of it.

No grudges and ain't upset - I live with a TBI survivor, I get it. I have my own anger issues and missing filters from PTSD and have bad days myself. It keeps our house...interesting.

We had a good sand bed water filter and it eliminated any hint of hardness from our well water but when it wore out and we discovered the company was gone so it was a dead thing, we tried more conventional filters for insignificant effect and now just live with it. 

The next step would have been a water softener but ours isn't that bad. Have you considered a water softener?

The two dispensers in our dishwasher don't come out but I imagine filling them with paper towels, cotton balls or similar soaked with Vinegar might work. Make sure the build up is good and dry first so the vinegar can soak in. If it doesn't dissolve it, it should weaken the bond to the plastic dispensers and maybe flake or chip off. With a plastic implement so you don't cut it!

CLR shouldn't hurt the septic system's anaerobic bacteria, you're not going to dump 5 gallon cans are you?

There is no secret about American manufacturers not being able to duplicate Japanese varnishes and lacquers. They're a very tradition bound and secretive culture and no two lacquer makers know the other's secret formula, methods, etc. Even now look at the blade makers, the stream or beach where they collect black sand and the methods they use are close held secrets, many more than a thousand years old.

Glad you put me onto the topic of lacquers and shellacs. I learned a bunch of things, thank you.  I vaguely remembered one of them being processed from insects. That'd be shellac which is a waxy secretion from the female lac beetle on twigs and branches of the plants they're eating. The wood finish type shellac is harvested from lac bug secretions on specific types of plant which determines the color. The processed chips are then dissolved in alcohol for the wood finish application but the stuff is everywhere and has been in common use for thousands of years.

I read about shellac here.  https://www.britannica.com/topic/shellac 

Lacquer is extracted, maybe collected is a better term, from plants in the poison sumac family and until it's completely cured is toxic on contact. Long time lacquer workers typically spend years building a tolerance for the toxin. 

Lacquer is a lot more complicated, what little I picked up just now came from here.  https://brittlebeauty.winterthur.org/whatislacquer/

Great rabbit hole, thanks again!

Frosty The Lucky.

13 hours ago, Frosty said:

you're not going to dump 5 gallon cans are you?

I might, I might...I've thought about a water softener, but unfortunately, so has my wallet. The other thing that drives me nuts up here is Washington is death on do-it-yourself home improvement/repair...if they catch you, so it would cost a lot more or I'd risk having to have it redone if I ever sold the place, even if everything was perfect and to code.

I like shellac a lot but had to stop using it for awhile when I was trying to get my drinking under control. Smelled too much like Irish whiskey. At this point, I have more holes than rabbits. I've been beating myself up for not grabbing a bunch of oak galls I saw down at Camp Murray last drill so I could make iron gall ink.

I hear you and I'm not going into another Washington tax rant. Has Boeing relocated completely yet?

Buy shellac powder and mix it with clean water, it just takes thinner coats and longer to dry than a volatile like alcohol. Not your well water of course! Then again maybe there's a market for an opaque shellac finish? Ooh OOH! Lay it on wax paper till it forms a relatively thick hard film and use it to make lantern glasses or lamp shades. Hmmmm?

Frosty The Lucky.