All owners of manual meat grinders, if they have not already encountered it, will definitely encounter a similar problem when the meat grinder has sharpened or new knives, but it does not chop or cut the meat, but instead chews it. Such a defect, as you may have guessed, is due to the production of parts and components. There is no need to be afraid of him, the whole issue is resolved in 15 minutes.
The reason why the meat grinder does not cut
Remove the handle and pull the auger shaft.
It moves a few millimeters back and forth. There shouldn't be such a big gap. We are trying to tighten the clamping nut more. Most likely this will not work and the backlash will remain.
Let's disassemble the meat grinder. And here’s the reason: the auger has a plastic or nylon bushing, which has worn off over time. As a result, this free movement of the auger was formed, as a result of which the cutting knives cannot fit tightly to each other and cut efficiently.
Repairing a meat grinder
As I said, the repair is very simple. Remove the bushing from the auger shaft.
We take a regular nylon lid for a glass jar and cut out a washer-gasket from it.The inner diameter of which is the diameter of the shaft, and the outer diameter is the diameter of the sleeve skirt.
I personally didn’t like the thickness of one gasket, since the gap was quite large, so I cut out two of these washers.
We put a gasket (or two if necessary) on the shaft.
Then we put the bushing back.
It can be seen that the total thickness has increased.
We assemble the meat grinder. We install the auger and knives. And before screwing the nut, you can already see that the mesh knife protrudes noticeably. This is how it should be, now the nut will press it securely.
Tighten the nut. And again we pull the shaft back and forth. There is no backlash.
We put on the handle and fix it with a screw. Let's try to scroll. The handle should turn slightly tightly.
Here's a very simple way to get your meat grinder back up and running for many years to come.
In the future, of course, you will have to replace the bushing that has expired, but that is still a long time away.
