Weston #10 Manual Meat Grinder and Sausage Stuffer with 4.5mm & 10mm Plates, 3 Sausage Funnels - Heavy Duty Tinned Steel for Home Kitchen, Hunting, Camping & Sausage Making

If you're considering purchasing this meat grinder you are probably going through a similar thought process as I did: Should I buy a cheap electric grinder and worry about it wearing out quickly, or do I purchase this old trusty hand grinder to get me through a fall or two of hunting and save up for a quality electric grinder? Well as you can tell by me writing a review of this grinder, I decided on the latter option.When considering the purchase of this grinder you'll need to be realistic as to what to expect. You're not going to be able to easily grind through hundreds of pounds of meat quickly and without hard work. Hand grinding meat is not a fun thing. But if you are willing to put in the time to save a few bucks, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this product or any of the other sizes of Weston meat grinders to you. Just be realistic about the amount of meat you're going to attempt to grind. If it's under 15 lbs you can probably handle it in an afternoon.As far as build quality goes on this grinder, there's really nothing wrong with it. Everything worked very smoothly for me this fall and nothing at all broke. The parts are cast and seem very strong. The carbon steel blade stayed sharp through the entirety of my 30+ pounds of meat that it ground. It cuts through meat easily without too much pressure needed on the handle, but realize that you'll need to turn the handle 1-2 gazillion times in order to get the job done.Since I was grinding venison and it tends to be sinewy and tough, I didn't use the smaller grinding plate on my grind at all. I just ran it through the larger plate twice. This doesn't seem to be detrimental at all to the quality of the burger that I got out of it. However, if you're grinding pork or beef, I could see running it through a smaller plate being beneficial for a fine grind.The one problem that we ran into while grinding this fall is that the deer tallow ends up building up in the auger channel, filling up the slots cut in the sides which help the auger push the meat through to the cutter. This was a simple fix, as we just disassembled the grinder (this only takes a minute or less) and scraped out the fat in the channels. This was required 3 times during our 30 pounds of grind, so if you're grinding less than 10 pounds I don't think I'd worry about that as much. HOWEVER, it could get worse with a fattier meat like beef or pork. Your mileage may vary with that.All in all, I would definitely recommend this grinder to anyone that's budget conscious that is willing to put in a bit of work for their ground meat. This would also be a great choice for a chef needing to make a few sausages or a couple of pounds of ground meat of any kind. It will zip through that job with minimal effort.