My grinder is now a stuffer

Click through to the image to see the note on the Flickr image.

On Andrew's recommendation, my lovely wife and child bought me a grinder for Father's day. It's a prized possession of mine. On various message and review sites, it has a known deficiency. It requires one to stuff a sausage mixture through one of the dies. No sausage maker worth their salt would ever consider such an option.

Taking a hint from the Kitchen Aid version of the sausage stuffing set up (the Kitchen Aid version of the grinder/stuffer is made for a little girl, the grinder I'm talking about can grind the weight of an average size adult per hour) and decided to make an auger support; a critical piece for successful stuffing using the auger mechanism.

The only material strong enough was one of the dies itself. I decided to sacrifice the one with the 12 mm dia. holes (I never use that one and can probably replace it). I excised the middle section of it leaving it mostly open for meat to come through to the stuffing tube. Click through on the image for the flickr note I placed on the image.

It was a bitch to cut. Thick steel. I used 6 grinder wheels and 3 days of intermittent work to get it cut. But, fits like a perfectly machined piece. I'll get some dog food-grade ground meat to give it a control run.