Hand Crank Meat Grinders

[hog warden]

Over the past few months, I've picked up a few small hand grinders for making sausage. Not good for a guy wanting to process whole deer or hogs, but certainly doable for grinding a few pork butts into sausage or brats. Turns out you can get a really good one for around $20 to $30. If there is interest, I'll put together a summary of them.....how they work and what to look for in used equipment. If not, I'll just quietly use them myself.

What ya think?

 

[tasunkawitko]

i would certainly be interested!

 

[em21701]

I can't see how a review could be a bad thing. I'd love to see it.

 

[morkdach]

bring it on

 

[hog warden]

OK, but it will be a few days. In the meantime.........not that I would stoop so low as to tease or anything......

But here are the candidates:




The ones on the right are/were sold as food choppers/meat grinders and are the most easily found/common type out there. To the middle is a Griswald meat grinder. Far left are the real deal. Enterprise meat grinders. A #22, #12 and #5 clamp on.

Don't know if this looks like a problem or not, but it is:



Another look at the same thing......



Not life or death but it means a new blade. About $12 to $15




Ooops. My first fattie. How did that get in there? Oh yeah. It used to be a pork butt before that #22 went into action.

Stay tuned!

 

[rivet]

Please let me know, cause the hand crank grinders I've used stunk and that's why I still haven't been able to make sausage!

 

[morkdach]

nice fatty mister warden keep us informed on this
thanks

 

[bbq engineer]

Great tease...I would love to start grinding my own sausage, and am really interested in the hand crank models as a start into this...I can't wait to read your review!

 

[hog warden]

On the #22, I can do 10 pounds of butts in around 5 minutes. I grind the first batch with a 1/2" plate, mix in the spices and grind again with a 3/16" plate. Takes much longer to bone the meat out and cube it up that grinding it. Even twice.

Rivet: What grinder did you use and what was the problem?

If you notice the #12 (second from the left), it's a like new grinder (50 years plus old...but hardly used) and I imagine the reason it wasn't used was the condition of the blade (plate and blade in the picture). The plate is like new. The blade was like new, except some well meaning soul had tried to sharpen it and ruined the blade. They back ground it, meaning the cutting blades were working more like ski tips than a knife. It wouldn't grind 5 cranks of the handle without clogging up and stopping.

The leading edge of the blade runs on the plate an angle, so if you really crank down the ring to tighten the plate on the blade as you are supposed to do so it cuts the meat and sinew, vs. clubbing (pinching) it, the knife becomes self sharpening.......metal on metal, lubed by the moisture and fat in the meat. It doesn't need to be sharpened as this guy did it. As much as anything the wear is on the downwind side of each hole in the plate as the edge erodes over time. The plate hole edges elongate and round over. Now you are back to pinching it off vs. cutting. And of course, cold, stiff, partially frozen meat cuts better than the softer, more pliable room temp meat. But that's the case with a hand knife or a grinder.

More to come.

 

[flatbroke]

I dont like mine either. I used it once and its been sitting on my garage shelf ever since.

 

[bigbaldbbq]

I'm going to have to start looking around. I've been wanting a grinder, but I am cheap!...haha

 

[hog warden]

On the grinding plates, this is a new 1/8" hole plate and like new blade for the #22:







Notice the leading edge isn't dished out like on the previous blade and how tight it rides on the cutting surface. This is how they are supposed to look. And due to the angle, as the blade wears away, it remains sharp....the plate and blade mating to themselves as they wear in.

 

[hog warden]

What didn't you like? What went wrong? Is it a #32?

I suspect you need an NCAA Division 1 lineman to operate the crank on a #32 if you are trying to push the first grind of meat through a 3/16" plate on a #32.

 

[bman62526]

I am also very interested in your review!! I posted some questions about sausage a couple months ago...hell, it may have been before the BIG CRASH.

I kind of gave up on the whole idea of doing my own sausage because a) I was told that a lot of the cheaper electric grinders were no good and b) the better grinders are tall money!

I know that I won't ever want to do more than 10 lb.s of sausage every few months...until maybe someday when I'm in a bigger house, kids are older, work is slower, etc...so I thought about a hand grinder, but I know NOTHING about them. I would welcome your review/advice, etc.

 

[hog warden]

How much is "cheap"?

I paid $22 for the #5 on ebay, but it had a brand new 3/8" plate. That is close to $20 by itself. The #12 was $18.50, but then it needed the new blade, so I have about $30 in it. (Add $10 - $12 to all ebay buys for shipping). Watch and you can pick up a #5, #10/12 on ebay for $10 to $20, plus shipping.

The smaller food choppers (don't do it!) can be had for $5 to $20 in antique stores or ebay. Quality is generally not good (tinning is green). If they are in good shape, they seem to be priced in the $20 to $30 range, and again, not what you want anyway. As far as numbers go, there are 10 or 20 of the smaller, less expensive food shoppers for every good #10 or #12 Enterprise meat chopper. And most of them are green and/or rusty. Ebay is the place to shop.

The #10 is the same size as the #12, the only difference being the #10 is a clamp on. A substantial clamp on. More like massive clamp on vs all the others, including the #5.

 

[hog warden]

Quick summary on the difference between a real meat chopper/grinder and a food chopper.

These are the plates/blades that came with the units:




The three on the right are food choppers:



Right to left:

Universal #2 with three cutters

OVB (Our Very Best) #2 (old mail order brand) with plates and cutters, including a "nut butter" plate for making your own peanut butter.

Keen Kutter #22 with three plates and fine grinding plate (would be good to crack black pepper).

Food choppers differ from meat grinders, in that they don't have blades. The cutting surface is cast into the body of the grinder. The plates rotate with the screw. The Universal and OVB have grooves cast in the grinder with direct and force product into and through the openings, where the rotating blades on the outside shear it off. Works great for vegatables, fruit, nuts, etc. but anything tough clogs in those openings. The meat in this meat chopper would best be limited to cooked meats like chicken or ham for a meat salad. A little to fine for pulled pork. Would work great to mince onions or peppers for sausage. The precurser to our modern food processors. The units with close holes tend to clog in heavy going and are a bitch to clean when you are finished.

The Keen Kutter doesn't have the closed openings, but other than that, is the same basic design. Hard to see how you can get them tight enough that sinew isn't going to bind between the fixed edge and rotating blade and bind up. Blades are also thin and if you really crank it down, I'd expect them to flex out and bend.

I have yet to try to grind butts through these (have two frozen butts thawing), but I'm not expecting much success.

Griswald #2 with 3/16" grinding plate. Early transition to a real meat grinder. Blade is blunt, but angled and rotates with the screw. Plate is thin, but fixed. This one might work better than the food choppers.

Peeking out on the left edge is the grinding plate from the #5 Enterprise. You can already see how much more massive it's built. No comparison in quality between the old Enterprise or Chop Rite grinders vs. any of the others.

 

[travcoman45]

Yall got a rite nice collection goin there!

 

[hog warden]

Thawed out a big 8# butt and cut it up to grind this afternoon. Tried all seven grinders with some cubes in the 1 to 1.5 inch range, which turned out to be a little big for all the grinders except the #22. More like 3/4 to 1 inch in order to drop into the screws for the smaller grinders. The victim:



Results were as I expected. Food choppers aren't cut out for this work. Again, although all the choppers look alike from a distance (hopper, screw, crank), food choppers are built different from the real meat grinders. Food choppers work by forcing the product through fixed openings cast into the body of the chopper, which are then chopped by rotating blades or plates on the outside. Meat grinders....even the big modern electric ones, operating by the screw forcing meat through a rotating blade, which turns inside the fixed plate. It's an old design, but it's how all the meat grinders work.

Anyway, you have seen the roster. Here is how they worked:

Universal #2:



What you get with a chopper like this is little meat wads. About 1/4 to 3/8 inch in size. There is a smaller set of cutters, that might get you mush. The one advantage this one had over similar units with holes in the plates was it didn't clog up with sinew.



What this grinder would be good at is mincing a couple of onions, jalapeno peppers, garlic cloves, etc. to mix with some ground meats. Would also work for chopping nuts, bread crumbs, etc. Better choices for making sausage.

Next up, the Hibbard, Spencer and Bartlett, OVB (our very best)). Same basic design as the Universal and same results.





Notice how the fixed openings clog up with sinew. Worse with the smaller food choppers with rotating round hole plates. Mean to clean.

One additional thing. Most of the clamp on units have some allowance to actually clamp to the wood. The Universal has flanges on the topside.



Some of the others have the flange on the bottom clamp side. Despite cranking them down as tight as possible by hand, the tendency was to move. ALL of them marred the board they were clamped to. Don't clamp this to a good kitchen table!




to be continued........

 

[hog warden]

Next up is the Keen Kutter. KK was a hardware store brand that operated out of St. Louis for nearly 100 years. They didn't make anything (much like Sears and others do now), they sold products made by others with their name on it. This was a KK#22 (same as other #2 sizes). Not fixed openings, but fixed fingers molded into the body of the grinder. Again, no blade to wear down and replace. The plate rotates. Worked just like the other two:



The Griswold #2 represents a transition from the first style to the real meat grinder. It has a thin, fixed plate. A small blade, which has a unique design. It angles like the others, but is reversible, as is the plate, so you can wear it out twice. Since this is a unique design and they appear to be out of business, replacement parts are going to be hard to find. The grind was not that bad. If you could find one of these that was pretty new, it would work.




Next up.....the Enterprise units.

 

[hog warden]

The Enterprise units, same thing as Chop Rite, is what I would focus on for grinding meat with a hand grinder. Did a short video of them working:





All of them work the same. The main difference I found was that the smaller units need smaller sized pieces of meat or they won't drop into the screw to feed through. The little #5 is a jewel. Small, but well built and it works well.

The replacement blade for the #12 is a LEM I picked up locally at Bass Pro. It's not the same, but it works.





This type of meat grinder works by pressing the plate against the screw by cranking down on the outside ring. They leave little to doubt:



The little nubs on the ring are used with special wrenches to really crank down on them. Aside from really cutting meat and sinew vs. trying to pinch it off, it does a couple other things. It initially makes the crank hard to turn, eventually being lubed by the fat and moisture in the meat. Also, metal on metal also creates heat from friction, which would be a concern if you decided to attach a wheel and motor (aside from getting sucked in to the belts or screw).

A little different look.



And there you are!




A few rules of thumb:

1. Cold, partially frozen meat cuts best (with all grinders)

2. The cranking effort was remarkably similar for ALL units. Big or small. The #22 is a load to push meat through the small plate on the first grind. Better with all units to grind it twice or cut up the meat into smaller chunks. First grind through 1/2" or so plate. Second grind down to 3/16". Any smaller than that and it's going to be tough to crank. Really tough.

3. Most of the larger Enterprise units with bolt hold downs were traditionally mounted on a long board (about 4 feet), which was placed on two chairs facing each other, with the crank operator sitting on one end to hold the unit down. Another person could sit on the other side and feed it.

4. The #5 is as small as I would go. The #12 is a very good size, but needs a second, larger plate. #10 is the same size as #12, differing only that it is a clamp on. Apparently, the #12 is a common size for electric grinders, so is a common size for plates and blades.

The #22 is a beast and will do 10# of butts in 5 minutes or less. No harder to crank. But these are rare and hard to find. Not a common size for replacement parts.

A #32 is about half again larger than the #22. It is a beast. I'm not sure mere mortals could crank one to push the first grind through a 3/16" plate. For home use, this is a stretch.

In my experience, hand grinders are perfectly acceptable for doing a few butts a month for sausage. Not expensive ($30 or less) and easy to clean and store. But there is a limit. Do a whole hog or two, or a deer or two, and you may want to get that 1 HP Cabelas.