Show me your meat grinder - let's make a picture thread!

Please post pictures of your vintage meat grinders.  Something with a bit of age or use to it.  Not the shiny new ones.  

Play with lighting, angles, whatever you like.  

(and if you want to give me permission to use the photo for inspiration for a painting, that would be wonderful too - I can't find mine right now to take a photo, and the ones online I can find so far are too shiny.  So maybe you guys can help me out or failing that, we can get a fun thread with pictures)

To save me the frustration of bluffing my camera and computer into communication mode . . .
have a look at:-https://www.etsy.com/listing/1318381318/vintage-pedrini-lillo-meat-mincer
Surprise - it's "vintage"  so I wonder what that makes me    Mine is orange body with white handle and front screw on bit.  Heavy plastic, which is probably not what you are looking for at all!
It's yours to render in whatever medium you chose though!   Best of luck finding what you really want.

I found a food chopper at the thrift shop.  It's okay but I don't have access to my usual photo set up.  

I would love to see more if you guys have any photos to share.

It's more difficult than I imagined to find a decent picture of a vintage meat grinder, especially one with permission to use.  

I bought an electric grinder in 2012, it passed away 2 years ago.  But I was able to remove the housing and motor and all and now I can chuck it up in my Shopsmith lathe and run it there, I just have to block the grinder body from spinning which I do with a piece of wood.  You wouldn't believe the power it has hooked to the lathe..

I picked up another electric grinder about a year and a half ago at a local thrift store for $5 and I have been using that ever since.

I also have 4 old hand powered meat grinders as well.

Would love to see a picture of that.  Sounds amazing.

r ranson wrote:Would love to see a picture of that.  Sounds amazing.

I don't have any pictures of it and I don't feel like setting it up at the moment to get one.  

But if you can imagine..  You have the main setup that you assemble and then slide it into your drive unit it has the drive piece that turns inside the grinder.  Mine was a hexagonal hole that the motor end slid into.  I just ground a round piece of metal into a hexagonal shape with tight fit and drove it into meat grinder body.  This left me a half inch round piece of metal sticking out an inch and a half.

The lathe had a half inch drill chuck that can be fitted on it, I just simply opened the chuck and stuck that into the chuck and tightened it down.  Then I run the lathe at my lowest speed, all you have to do is keep the body of the meat grinder from spinning with the work of grinding the meat after that.  So I have a 1 hp meat grinder running that way.

That was my second evolution on that, first setup I took a log round and cut out a plus sign into the top leaving 4 big stubs on each corner and the plus sign cut out about 3 inches deep.  I just set the grinder in that and wired it in place between two stubs.  Then I chucked it up into my old Makita gear drive drill and placed the drill between the other two stubs sticking up and wired that in place.  Zip tied the trigger down and away I went.  Worked well, though even my powerful Makita half inch drill was a little shy on power.  I also did not want to burn up my drill, I have been using it since 1992 and I got it used and un-working from the garbage can at a construction company I worked for.  The drill is about 35 years old so using it hard for grinding in the long term wasn't going to work.  That and it is still my best most powerful drill and removing from the meat grinding setup was not the easiest feat so I went in search of another more feasible way to power the unit, which led me to the lathe setup.

They're not artsy photos, and I don't even know if they're meat grinders or not, but you're welcome to use them if you can. I found these when I was cleaning up my grandfather-in-law's garage.

They are lovely!

I don't own one of those anymore, but I know a place where they sell such old ('brocante') things. I pass along there once a week, so I can make a photo then.

I do have an old string bean cutter (or how do you call such a thing in English?), made of metal in an old-fashioned green colour. Probably it has been my grand-parents'. Is that okay for a photo too?

I would love to see both.

I've read about those bean machines, but never saw one.  Very curious about it.

The second photo of Nikki's reminds me of the one we had when I was growing up in the 1970s.  My parents downsized and moved into a condo in the city shortly before I got engaged, so I really don't know what became of it unfortunately.  Actually, my oldest brother may know or even have it...I'll have to remember to ask when we see them Saturday.

Hi. Here are some photos of my old 'bean cutting mill'. Sorry I don't have a 'picturesque' background. There's only one table where I can fit this thing on and that's in the 'mud-room' next to the kitchen. For a painting you can change the background of course.
For lovers of old machines I took photos from different sides. Showing how the beans go in and come out.

Yes, they have such things for sale. Both a meat grinder and a bean cutter. But in very bad shape (not so strange, it's outside, in all kinds of weather).

rusty meat grinder

very rusty bean cutter

That Husqvarna meat grinder looks pretty much like the one I grew up with, although it wasn't rusty...it was quite shiny, so it may have had a coating - it seems like more of a cast body than something that would be made from stainless steel.

I decided not to do the painting at this time.  But I am loving seeing the grinders and choppers and slicers.  Great photos.

As I get older, I can't help but think that a bean cutter, similar to a meat grinder, would most serve those who, like one friend of mine, have lost most or all of their teeth and can't be bothered - or can't afford - to keep a working set of dentures.

That would have included a lot of adults back in the day. My Danish grandmother had all her teeth out years before she immigrated to Canada at the age of 27 (in 1929). Toothbrushes were probably rare or expensive, and dental floss unknown. My grandparents had full sets of dentures. My parents had partial plates. I get root canals, and try to keep as many molars in my head as possible. Progress.

So the tradition of julienne or "French-cut" beans helped older people stay nourished and healthy. I can imagine my grandmother loving a machine like Inge's.

At our house, we just eat ground beef and stew, not steak. Meat grinders are a great invention.

It also dramatically reduces cooking time, tus saving money on fuel.

I won't bother to post a picture but do have to tell a meat grinder story: The Wife and I were on a vacation where we spent 10 days in Nuremberg. On market day the whole of the town square fills with about anything you could imagine. The Wife bought a pair of metal lid steins for our evening tea and what did I buy? An old but looks-like-new manual meat grinder with 3 various plates for 10 euros. Yeah, good day! The fun part was coming home because when checking in at the airport my checked bag was too heavy and the overweight charge was ridiculous so without the meat grinder it was just right. I stuffed the meat grinder in my carry on. Next was security check in and the wife was fine but I all of a sudden had multiple security guys moving me off to the side. One of them the pulls the meat grinder out of the bag and demands an explanation to which i shrugged and said I bought it at the market. He immediately paged the supervisor who hadn't even got there yet and asked loudly what was causing the hold up. You have to know that American in the security with the meat grinder was getting a lot of attention by now. The the security guy holds the meat grinder up high so the supervisor (and everyone else in the area) can see it. The boss stops kind of dumbfounded, looks down shaking his head and flips his hand and reverses direction. Whew.

Y'all came close to reading about the American terrorist with the meat grinder but thank the Lord for a level headed crew supervisor.