There is just no good English translation for כלי -- you can try utensil, apparatus, implement, tool, gizzy, thing-a-ma-bob... they are all correct in the right context, somewhat misleading in the wrong context. The gemara even uses it to mean "clothing." So let's just leave it alone.
When it comes to the requirement for טבילה, the rules seem straightforward enough: The Torah requires that when a Jew acquires a metal כלי from a non-Jew -- that is, ownership is transferred from the non-Jew to the Jew -- then the Jew needs to immerse that כלי in a kosher mikveh before he uses it. Chazal added glass כלים and some stringencies about the mikveh. Simple enough.
There are two details that make things a bit more interesting. One, "use" means "for its intended purpose", but has nothing to do with contact. For example, If it starts hailing as you are walking to your car with your newly purchased (from a non-Jew) griddle pan to your car, you are certainly allowed to put the griddle pan over your head to protect yourself from the hail/rain/snow -- even though you haven't yet immersed it in a mikveh. On the other hand, even were you to cover it with 18 layers of heavy duty foil, it would still be forbidden to cook some pancakes on that foil that is covering that pan until you have immersed the pan in a kosher mikveh -- even though the food is nowhere near the surface of the pan.
The other detail is that, in general, anything disposable/single use doesn't fit into the category of כלי in this context. When you line your baking pan with foil, you don't need to immerse the foil first (of course, you have already immersed the baking pan; that goes without saying). When you buy a bottle of salad dressing, you don't need to empty the bottle, clean it, immerse it, then refill it. Disposable/single use items are not כלים (in this context, anyway) and do not require immersion. That absolutely does not mean you can use a כלי once before immersion! If it is a כלי, it requires immersion for even one use; if not, not.
With that introduction, I'd like to present to interesting טבילה cases that I recently discussed with R' Fuerst. Neither requires טבילה, but for quite different reasons.
Case One:
I need to kasher my stove top for pesach. Cast iron grates, so I just need to turn up the burners to high for some time, while spreading the flame with the kind of pot that is normally used. My stove has a griddle burner -- an elongated burner in the middle that I use with my pancake griddle. I don't have a pesach pancake griddle, so I took a disposable aluminum pan -- never immersed, as it is destined to used once and then discarded -- added water and spread the flame with that.
In this case, I do not need to discard the pan. Yes, I boiled water in it, but not to cook water. The pan was there to spread the flame, the water was just there to prevent the pan from melting. Since the pan was not being used as intended, this is not a use that renders the pan used.
Case Two:
A bottle of very pungent spices comes with two additions: (1) the very pungent spices are in a plastic bag (inside the bottle) -- presumably to keep them nice and pungent till you get them home. (2) the lid is fitted with a plastic grinder -- presumably you would not want these spices touching your home grinder, because you'll never rid them of the taste/smell.
Now you can ask the following: what is the nature of that bottle vis-à-vis its function in this enterprise. You could look at the bottle as the main thing and the plastic grinder in the lid as a fun freebie (wink wink nod nod... no, it is not free). The plastic bag in this case is no better than the foil covering your backing pan above -- it is irrelevant to the טבילה question. Since you are meant to discard the bottle (and cap/grinder) when you are finished with the spices, the bottle is ipso facto not a כלי; no immersion required.
On the other hand, you could assert that the spices are being sold in a plastic bag and they are also giving you a free (yeah, right) disposable grinder. In that case, the fact that the bag is in the bottle is just a merchandising convenience and the bottle is not being used. However, in this case, the main component is the grinder in the lid; the lid itself is subordinate to the grinder. The glass bottle? You can't use the grinder without a hopper of some sort, so the bottle is also subordinate to the grinder. The grinder is plastic, obviously meant to be discarded after the spices have been used. That is, they are not selling bags of spices to refill the grinder bottle. The bottle, therefore, being subordinate to the disposable grinder is ipso facto not a כלי; no immersion required.
By the way, what if you did decide to keep a כלי that the manufacturer expected you to discard? There is a machlokes about whether it would then require immersion. R' Moshe paskened that the act of the Jew deciding to keep the bottle/grinder/whatever is what changed its status to a כלי. Meaning to say, that newly minted כלי was never owned by a non-Jew and therefore does not require immersion.
Ah... to-vel or not to-vel... that is an interesting question!
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