Going up next week with stick'n string looking for Bambi. The optimist in me has me making room in the freezer for fresh venison by using up some pork to make fresh Hungarian style sausage. We didn't stuff it into casings, just bulked it into baggies for use as you wish. Chile, meatloaf, pizza, etc. Ground up and seasoned about 30#s. We let the bags marinade over night in the fridge, then freeze them. Got the whole house smelling like garlic!

A confident hunter is a successful hunter. Good luck this weekend, I'd like to see another picture of that buckzilla deer you showed us last season. Hopefully you or one of your bunch gets a chance to drive one through his lungs.

Not sure if you're hunting from a tree or not? Be careful if you are. I just heard the other day that some man fell out of his treestand and messed himself up. I was told that he may never walk again. Wouldn't that suck! Take a day off of work to go have fun, then end up in the hospital.

Just thinking, 30 pounds of meat through a hand-crank grinder, that's a lot of cranking! Looking at the reddish color of your sausage, I guess that's Frank's hot & spicy style?

That's how we used to do. Eventually we electrified the hand grinder then just broke down and bought and electric grinder. We ground hogs, deer, cows and all. Nothing like home made sausage.

Nope, no tree stand for me. Been there, done that. Was always the carpenter that would get sent aloft. No problem with heights. But now I'm a ground hugger. Don't bounce real good anymore. Too friggin' old to be doing a Peter Pan off my climber stand. And I believe that big buck was taken last year by the camp north of us.

We've been tweakin' that sausage recipe for years. Came with my pop's side of the family when they came back to this country. (Pop and all the siblings were born here. Mom died so the old man took them all back to Hungary with him) We cut down on the sharp red pepper, but use quite a bit of paprika. When it becomes so sharp that you lose the taste of the thing, it's time to cut back. The red pepper get you in your mouth, the black pepper hammers the back of your throat. We got it down pat now so there's just a hint of sharp, but a lot of garlic taste. If you enjoy a meal of our sausage on Sunday, you should still be burpin' it on Wednesday! That's good sausage!

Frank.

Did you guys ever remove the handle and hook a drill to your hand grinder?

Nah, slow and steady. Need to come out of it with all ten digits!

Frank.

Looks like that'd be tough on a drill.

My buddy Wardney has one rigged with an electric motor and pulley, it runs way too fast. You almost need a backstop on the dishpan. And I'll tell you that little hopper is pretty darned shallow!

Talking about all 10 digits, I have a lady that stops here at work every so often, she lost the tip of one of her fingers in a grinder rigged up exactly the same way. I'll check the next time I see her, but I think she lost that joint up past her fingernail. You'd really never notice it and I only do when I'm handing her change.

I actually started getting parts together for a motorized fix to our grinder. Got a step down electric motor that already turns really slow. Was gonna hook it up to a foot petal for on and off power. Got the pulley for the motor, but still have not gotten one for the grinder. The spindle is somewhat tapered with a flat spot to receive the handle. I just put the idea on the back burner, and that was years ago. Since then I've figured that good company, cold beer, and just kickin' it around while making our sausage has the slow down time we all could use. And hand grinding that little thing helps the cause. Had a friend describe our sausage making as 'a happening'.

Frank.

Ceilidh!! Look it up. Great times!

Yeah, pretty close with the music and storytelling. Except we don't dance around the sausage table. We just drink beer instead.

Frank.

The lady that I mentioned above that lost her finger tip, just talked to her oldest son, he's a little bit older than me. She did lose the whole joint with her fingernail. I'm sure her hands were cold and it probably didn't hurt till the next day.

Here at work I have a bunch of folks that try to sell me junk/antiques. Had a guy offer to sell me a hand crank meat grinder, today, similar to the one in the pics above, plus some other necessities. Offered the whole works to me for $75. I asked about just the grinder, it was mounted on a board, he asked $50 for it. I told him that was out of the price range. Probably worth 10 or $15, if it's not froze up or all gunked up. Didn't really have time to look at it, but I don't need it. So, sent it back home with him. Never know, he may be back later?

First off, if you're gonna buy a hand cranked grinder, get the kind with four legs so you can screw it down. I've got a smaller one that clamps onto a table or shelf edge. Use it for grinding mice, but that's about all the size chunks I'd put into it. I think I paid five bucks for it. For the bigger ones, make sure you scrutinize the die and cutting blade. They're replaceable, but that adds to the total cost. I'd say 30-40 bucks for a used grinder in good clean workable shape.

Frank.

I don't need a hand crank grinder, we've got a couple of the things. If I would have bought it, it would have been used to collect dust.

It was bolted onto a board, and one of the bigger types that were made. It looked to be in pretty good shape, but I didn't look at it up close. You know, years ago stuff was made to last, and most folks took good care of their equipment. Today everything is pretty much disposable. The guy also had an old horse collar/hame, and a carbide torch. Just junk.

Here at work I have a small grinder, the tray will hold about 30 pounds of meat, haven't used it for years. Years ago we did beef and pork every week, and it was tough to compete with the big store here in town. Today we've got three big stores here in town. Friends of mine own the original BIG store, that's where I buy my meat.

You need a double reduction set up to slow the hand grinder down to hand speed. The speed at which it is designed to run. You need a very large pulley on the grinder. The reduction pulley will be hard to find.

Here's a shot of the little step down motor I mentioned. It reduces the 1725 rpms down to 145. That is still twice as fast as I would like it for grinding meat. With the proper sized pulleys I could get that down to 60rpms. That's about what I crank at for grinding. The down side to all of this is that everything has to be rigidly secured. When we mount the stuffing funnel to fill casings, we need four times the grinding speed. Rebuilding and securing the drive train would take up too much time and effort. That's why I decided to stick with hand grinding.
Fill casing to brat size, pinch both ends and spin forward a half dozen times. Fill next brat size, pinch both ends, and spin backwards. Forward, backward, forward, backward, etc.

Frank.

Here's the girl's hand I was talking about. Happened back in 1978, pretty much one of those ka-la things mentined above. Deloris was on the way home from church when she stopped by today. Said she looked around to check on the kids, and it happened in a heart-beat.

You know, this last batch of meat we just ground up tastes just a little different, but I just can't put my finger on it. (a little morbid humor here)

NAILed it! The entire JOINT is laughing.

Whenever someone I know has a broken finger, I ask if they got punched on the nose.

Oh, Deloris is a super nice lady. I'm sure they tossed out the pan full, Or at least a big glob, but stuff like that happens so fast. Turn your head for a second and the damage is done.