sausage stuffer

a freind has a great recipe for venny summer sausage and i want to buy a stuffer.what brand or style do you fellow linkers reccomend?

Go to eBay and do a search for Enterprise press, they are a bit pricey but they will last forever and work awesome. Effortless cranking and total speed control; I have one that was passed to me with all my families old sausage making equipment and it works great.

Hard to beat old cast iron equipment!

 The Gander Mountain 15 lb stuffer has all metal gears and is the lowest priced 15 lb stuffer I could find 2 years ago when I got mine. 

I have no complaints with mine. 

The horn style stuffer I first had to use would have a considerable amount of meat bypass the plunger. I used a dishtowel folded in half  to wrap around the plunger to help prevent this. It did work OK then but still was slow and difficult to use. The hand crank one I have now from Cabelas has metal gears and works well.   

Right now Northern Tool has the 5# vertical stuffer on sale for $79. the horn style stuffers just aren't worth spending the $$ on because the meat squirts past the plunger making a mess, trust me I've tried it. As far as the plastic gears on the Gander stuffers this is a problem that will never go away, no matter how easy you are with them the gears either break teeth off or fold over like one person said. 

thanks for the tips,leaning toward the weston brand stuffer as it has steel gears.post results when its out of smoker.

 I have 5 lb stainless Gander vertical one.  Just stuffed and smoked 25 lbs of PS Seasoning BBQ sticks on Sunday.  Noticed stuffer was slipping when stuffing, thought gosh do i need to add more water to the meat, thought i added enough.  Added more and then noticed the one nylon gear has 3-4 teeth bent right over on it.  NO idea when that happened.  I think one of my kids must have cranked it all the way when I wasnt around and then reefed on it when it got to the end, because no way stuffing watery meat is gonna do that.  Called and both new gears are 20 bucks total.  Really wish I had a 15lb vertical so I could only load it up twice when I do 25 lb batches, but dont have an extra couple hundo laying around right now.  Guess I'll order the gears and keep using it.  It really only stuffs 4lbs at a time though and my batch was closer to 30 lbs of sticks, so I had to load it up about 8 times to stuff all the meat.  Slow and tedious.  

Anyone want a deal on a 5lb stuffer if I replace the gears, so I can buy a 15lber?

Oh, the smallest tube they come with isn't small enough for 18mm snack stick casings either, so I had to flare an end on a piece of 3/8" stainless tubing and make a tube.  The bigger stuffers come with more tubes.  This batch I used 21mm collagen casings and I didn't care for the larger size of the sticks really.  Makes a lot less sticks too, and they took much longer to smoke and cook.  Sort of prefer the 18mm, but they are more difficult to stuff and break open easier.

I've got a vertical hand crank plunger type from Gander Mtn. It works pretty good but I am not making 400 lb batches either. One issue is the gears are white plastic or nylon material and I am sure they are going to fail me at some point. Seen reviews where that is the most often stated complaint. That said the the price was right and I needed it that afternoon so I picked one up. Its made it thru a couple sausage making sessions so far. Would look for one with metal gears if I made sausage more frequently or was buying over.

I have the plunger type for small jobs say 8-10 sticks it works good.  Bought it at Gander Mountain.  Cabelas has them also.  I suggest getting the biggest one they have.  For large batches we have an electric driven screw type that you turn on off with a foot pedal...very nice for large batches.  The last two years we've done 400 pound batches with it.

There are three types available. The most economic is the plunger type that has an arm that pushes a plunger through a horn. They do work OK and are suitable for small quantities and very occasional use. They are about $69.00. I used one of those many years ago and tired of the slow pace and long amount of time to stuff a casing. There are stuffing horns available for grinders also whether it is a hand crank or electric. They are slow and time consuming also. The third type is the hand crank plunger with a piston and O-Ring to seal the plunger to the tube wall. I have an 11 lb. capacity horizontal from Cabelas. I can stuff 25 lbs in 30 minutes or less, that will yield 8 casings. Look at the Cabela's, Ganders or PS Seasonings website for them. Most offer vertical stuffers now rather than the horizontal, very same principal. I use the P S Seasonings for Summer Sausage.  My end result.