Which meat grinder do you use?

[thelefthand]

I normally butcher my deer with my dad, and we use his grinder. He's got an old grinder that we used to use to grind beef and hogs. I would guess that it's a #32, and it looks like an old Hobart, but I'm not sure what the actual brand is. I just know that it spits out hamburger as fast as you can drop the meat in, and you don't want your hands any where inside the feed throat because if the auger gets hold of you, it will spit you out the other end bones and all. Over the past few years, I've done more hunting down here near the house, and I've killed a hand full of deer, and its kind of a pain to haul them up to his place to grind the hamburger. This year I killed a small doe and borrowed a cheap grinder from a friend. He warned me a head of time that it didn't work very good. It was one of those $79 el chepo units. Took me 6 hours to double grind about 4 gal of meat. It would have been a lot faster to drive an hour north to my folks, get the grinder out, grind the meat, clean the grinder, and drive an hour home. Total time would have probably been less than 3 hours.

So now I'm looking for opinions on the grinders that others are using to get an idea of what's good and what's not. I don't need something as big as what my dad has, but I'd like to be able to double grind the meat off of a 120 pound doe in about an hour and a half or less.

Thanks,
Mark

[deadeye]

i have a hobart #22 plate,will grind it in less than 10min,the more horsepower the better &stainless is a must. dont know about these models's in cabelas ,i would look for butcher equipment that is being sold from a shop thats out of business/imo-they dont make em like they use to!

[minst7877]

We use a 1hp Cabelas model and it does a great job. We just did over 50lbs of burger the other day and the ran it thru three times in a little over a hour. First run was a rough grind, the second was a mix of pork and venison thru the large plate and the third was thru the fine grind plate.

DC

[tar12]

I have a Cabelas 1 hp as well.It will flat grind deer! A quality product!

[dans]

I got my 1 hp from Gander Mountain. It is made by LEM and I think Cabelas is too. No complaints and it has paid for itself many times over. Am going to get the cuber attachment next.

[rossman40]

I got the 1.35 hp from Gander also. It does the job plus had most of the accessories I wanted to start with. I have had it for about 5 years and have chipped a blade. Being a standard size I can get a commercial grade blade for less then $20.

[ripshod]

I use the large Cabela's hand grinder.I have no problem grinding 20 pounds of meat twice in 20 minutes.Ripshod

[deadeye]

tip -regardless of grinder brand passed by a commercial professional butcher to me,keep the same blade with the same plate(same side) always exact same & you will never have to sharpen the blade,true 15 years going strong,never mix & match

[raf]

Mine is a L.E.M. 1/2 horse.
www.lemproducts.com/category/grinders

Works great and I can't keep up to it putting in meat.

[thelefthand]

Thanks for the replies folks! I've been keeping an eye on craigslist for an industrial grinder. I've seen a few hobarts go for $300 to $500. Hopefully I'll be able to save up for one of those. I'm not sure if my dad's is a hobart or not, but it looks a lot like it. He's been using it for over 34 years, and it does just fine on a whole beef, as well as the countless deer that we've run through it. Sounds like the LEM is also a decent machine and would probably also serve my needs just fine.

As a follow up, I will say that several years ago my uncle borrowed the grinder, and did not clean it up afterwards. It caused the plates and the knives to rust and pit pretty good. Dad had been fighting with it every since. He was going to buy a new grinder last year. I'm not sure if he meant the whole grinder, or just the plates. Regardless, after deer season I took the plates in to work and put them on a surface grinder. I took .005 of the first side, so that I had enough flat surface to work with on the mag chuck, then flipped it over and ground the other side flat taking off 0.0005" at a time and giving it plenty of time to cool as I went, and then flipped it back over and finished the first side doing the same thing. At the end of the day I took almost 0.025" off each side, and did the same thing on both the course and fine plates. I wasn't able to be there while he was grinding this year, but he said that they were good as new. I wasn't able to grind the knife blades, so it's still the old blades. We were concerned that the "new" plates and the old blades wouldn't work very well together, but they did. We had always kept the blades and plates as a match set as recommended above. This has me to thinking that it's not quite as important as we had once thought, but it's still a good practice.

Thanks again for the replies!
Mark

[olegburn]

lefthand,
if it is one,two or even three deer at the time you grind-manual grinder like they sell in Cabelas is gonna be enough,unless you have physical problems working it. It will make your arm stronger
Me and my friend process our own,average 12-15 deer a season and every time he brought the electric powered one it was more set-up and cleaning versus manual one. So I stick with manual and never regreted it.
Even my wife does it when I'm busy.
It won't need much room to store and real easy to clean.
Ditto on keeping blade and plate as a set.
olegburn

[thelefthand]

Well, last spring I took a chance and bought some off name brand off of e-bay. It was an 1800 watt #12, and it was about $100 by the time I factored in shipping. I read several reviews on it, and it sounded like it was okay. I got a doe (about 110 lbs) a few weeks ago with a bow, and that was my first chance to try it out. It did okay. I cut my meat into smaller pieces, and got it nice and cold in my cooler (which I will post more about in another post), and it did just fine. A little slow, and way shy of the 200 lbs per hour that they advertise, but for one deer at a time it was okay. Took me 2 hours to cut my steaks (I had already quartered and de-boned the deer) and grind the burger twice. I also added a 10 lb pork shoulder to the burger mix. I noticed that they have changed the name of the grinders on e-bay slightly. I would NOT go less than 1800 watts. The 2400 watt unit would be a little better as I'm sure this is a peak rating, but the biggest limitation is the size of the feed throat. It's worth the $100 that I gave for it, but if I had given $150 I would have paid too much. The 2200 watt models are still #12 with the same size feed throat, and it's not worth the money that they are selling for IMHO.

Just my 2 bits,
Mark

[boarhog]

I'm too cheap to pay the price for a new 1 to 1.5 HP grinder, and I am convinced that anything smaller than that is likely to be less than satisfactory. I searched for a few years, but finally found an old commercial grinder out of a country store. I'll need to look at the plates to see if I can find a size, but it has about a 3" feed throat. the motor looks to be about 2 HP and runs on 110. Once you have the meat cut to feedable size, it will do a complete deer or hog in about 15 minutes. It takes longer to stop and put the ground meat in tubs or bags than it does to do the actual grinding. If I remember right, I traded about $200.00 worth of piano work for it. The only problem I have with it is that the rubber toothed clutch between the grinding head and the motor tends to slip on the motor shaft if I try to feed meat with too much tendon through it. I need to take it apart and get a more positive spot for the allen screws to set against. Maybe a keyway? I should order a couple of med plates and a new blade, but that's about it.
Boarhog

[rossman40]

Some of those big Hobarts are like 5hp and cost around $6k new and still bring half that used, rode hard and put away wet used. Of course they grind about 50lbs a minute. Even the 1.5hp models are like half that, $3k new and if you can find one used for less then $1k you better jump on it. Pretty good support for even the older models.

[thelefthand]

Yes, I agree. The industrial/commercial models are worth the price if you do several deer every year. That's the way my dad's is. The feed throat is big enough to pull your arm thought up to about the shoulder, and I'm very confident that it would do just that. His does not use a set screw, but has a square drive on the auger. There's a thumb screw that goes down into a hole to keep the head from rotating. We mainly use his grinder, but occasionally I'll get one with a bow or during late ML season down here and it's not worth the gas money to haul the meet an hour north and an hour back to use his grinder. Thus my need for a smaller grinder to use on occasion. With his, it still takes about 45 min to an hour by the time we set up, tear down, switch over the plates and knives, and all that stuff. Actual grinding time is probably only 15 or 20 min max. With my little one, it does take longer, but it's still faster than making the drive up there. If I were to only have access to one grinder, I would have spent more money and gotten a bigger grinder. At least 3/4 hp and at least a #22 head.

For what it's worth, 110v single phase can only run about 1 hp max, and more like 3/4. I'm talking about actual output not a peak rating. Anything over that really isn't what they are advertising it as. The bigger Hobart units often run on 3 ph. I'm one of those guys that likes to have all his own stuff, and I tend to buy industrial/commercial quality because I want it to last the rest of my life This grinder was a huge risk for me, and it worked out okay, but in a few years it would not surpise me if I start looking for a REAL grinder again craigslist.

[timberman]

That Hobart sounds like the one I have it weighs about 100 lbs. and I have it in the basement I have put whole cow's thru it and lot's of pork. The farmer I bought it from used it for butchering his beef and making the burger. He let me use it about 20 yrs ago then said someone wanted to buy it so he needed it back. I asked how much he wanted and he said I probably wouldn't pay as much as he was asking. I was not about to carry it back out of the basement and I loved what it did to meat. As soon as he said $125.oo I said sold and I'll bring the money right over. Needless to say it's still in my basement and I use it every year.

[deadon]

I have one my wife bought me from Cacalas a few yrs ago and I like it very much . It just says heavy duty meat grinder on the box. It grinds faster than I can move the meat out of the way. The only problem is I will spent 5 or 6 hours cutting the sinew out cuz it jams up everything . I did not know there was any grinder that would grind up the sinew and if it does,is that a good thing? Thanks, Rusty

[zakjak221]

Rusty,

Read an article where they say to grind up saltine crakers thru meat grinder to clean the teeth. I haven't done it, but worth a try.

Mark

[deadon]

Nov 16, 2010 18:41:43 GMT -5 zakjak221 said:

Rusty,

Read an article where they say to grind up saltine crakers thru meat grinder to clean the teeth. I haven't done it, but worth a try.

Mark

I ground 8 lbs today in about 5 minutes, but again I spent about 3 hours cutting out the sinew and silver skin. Do they say saltine crackers will clean the sinew out of the clogged holes in front of the blades, Thanks, Rusty

[deadeye]

1 tip for cleaning the plates is an air compressor imo ss is a must whatever unit you buy

[ourway77]

I bought one from Target stores $250 including shipping. It is a VG SS model I compared apples to apples with the very same one sold at Cabela's For $450 plus shipping. The last time I used it I ground all the meat that I meticuosly trim all the junk off. The doe was 120# With the exceptin of the back bone strips I gound the whole Deer it took 15 minutes to grind it all Never clogged, or bound up. I add pork to the Deer. I had people over to the house I told them it was Deer meat I got the usual looks but the ones who tried the hamburgers on the grill came back later for another. At the same time I bought a VG SS slicer from Target, I slice the back straps very thin and I have to say no more w/fried onions, lettuce, tomato, and mayo Hungry yet. Lou

[rabaney]

Dec 24, 2009 9:20:06 GMT -5 dans said:

I got my 1 hp from Gander Mountain. It is made by LEM and I think Cabelas is too. No complaints and it has paid for itself many times over. Am going to get the cuber attachment next.

[thelefthand]

I don't cut any of the junk out, and after double grinding it, you can't tell it. I will throw out a lot of the solid tallow and various large chunks of fat, but that's about it. It takes me about 2 hours to cut up a 120 lb deer (field dressed) by myself. At that point, the steaks are still in roast form. I let everything cool for a day in the cooler, and then cut the steaks and grind the burger. It took me about 2 hours to grind the burger twice, package it, cut the steaks, and package those. Total of 4 hours for everything except cleaning the grinder up. In contrast, dad and I both shot small bucks this year on the same day. They field dressed in the 135# range. We ground them at the same time, and were done with the grinding in about 45 min, and most of that time was moving tubs of meat in and out.

[smokepole50]

I use LEM #8 grinder and it is a great grinder for the money. It is all the grinder most people will ever need. I think it is supposed to be capable of 240 lbs per hour.

Smokepole