Dave, I am frugal, but require good performance of anything I use. I bought an Oster grinder four years ago at an estate sale for $15 and it works great (mine came with the sausage attachment also). It’s very user friendly, cleans easily and grinds as fast as I load it.It doesn’t take very much room to store either. It never overheats no matter how fast I feed it. I’ve seen several of these since always for about the same price. The only thing I’ve done to enhance performance is took the plate and cutters and sharpened and trued them on a mirror covered with wet or dry sand paper. Work them back and forth til the entire surface shows complete contact with the mirror.

Ebay looks to have every meat grinder known to man. If the critters only knew!

I would highly recommened getting at least a 1hp grinder. I upgraded, sort of, from a hand crank to a cheap walmart grinder a while back and found that the cheap one worked really well on nice clean deer meat. That grinder couldn’t handle elk or trimmings very well. I recently came to own 1 hp commercial grade from Cabelas which is amazing, haven’t been able to slow it down yet. A friend of mine just bought a 1hp cheaper version from Cabelas, i think it cost him around $100, other than being a bit louder I can’t tell the difference in ability or quality of grind between his and mine. As far as making sausage goes, try and get one that has the sausage attachment, even tho it counts as a frill, i really like having the sausage stuffer.

For occasional use, I still find my old hand crank grinder sufficient. And it’s “traditional” 😉

Got a Camp Chef smoker a few years ago. Also about that time a close friend introduced me to the “Sausage Lady”. Since that time I have been making about 50 lbs. of sausage sticks a year. Have tried the electric grinders, but still find my favorite to be the old hand crank one that I have.

Thanks,

Tim

I’ve had fairly descent luck sharpening the cutter on my hand grinder. I put it in a wood clamp to hold it secure and with a file sharpen following the existing angle of the cutter. It would be similar to sharpening a single bevel broadhead. You do not want to file the edge that is making contact with the plate. If the cutter is beyond sharpening I think they can be replaced. Hope that helps.

Bruce

PS; Don’t overtighten while clamping. they break easy.

Speaking from experience.

Some years ago I bought a base model KitchenAid mixer and a grinder attachment for it. It was plenty up front, but it works great. For grinding, I think it probably better suited for small batches. We use it to grind steaks and roasts if we need burger, both venison and beef.

Well then, maybe I just need a new hand-cranker.

If you know what brand of grinder you have you should be able to get new blades and plates for it. I went through my local hardware store guy to get my new blades and plates for our old hand crank. You can also do a search for the brand of grinder “replacement blades for X-brand grinder”.

Good luck

If (I mean when) you get tired of turning that old crank, you can do what my dad did…

He mounted the old manual grinder to a 2 X something board, took the handle off and put a pulley on it. Then he screwed a motor to the board and added a v belt. He’s been using the same contraption clamped to a table for 30 years. The down side is that it’s 6 feet long and is always in the way the rest of the year.

I’m sure you could think on it longer and make the board shorter. Or just clamp the grinder and the motor to a picnic table outside and save the board for fixing the house up 8)

I did the same thing with a large grinder from Ebay that is ball bearing with a 14 inch pulley to slow the thing down.

Meat grinders!!! Sometimes they work very well, mine does because I treat it like a lady. The best thing to do is get one with a 3″ grinding plate,then you can get a professional carbide tipped blade. They are only around 20 bucks but make all the difference in the world, while you’re at it buy brand new plates so both mating surfaces are “true”

If you have an old grinder that has a bronze bushing behind the worm shaft and the bushing is a bit worn it will allow play between the blade and plate and that’s what causes meat to “mush” So if that happens and you have the new blade and plate then you get a “fiber washer” and put it between the worm shaft and the back of the grinder. This allows you to tighten it with a lot of pressure between the blade and plate.

If you grind your meat while it’s partially frozen it REALLY helps the grinding because the meat can “shear” rather than mushing.

I hope this convoluted description helps!