Wed 4 Jan 2012
The Things One Finds On Pre-Dawn Walks Around The Neighorhood
Posted by Will under gadgets
[11] Comments
Susan and I have been lax this last month in our morning walks, but when I heard her alarm go off at 5:15 a.m. I was soon up and at ‘em for our local trek that runs about 1.25 miles. On the latter third of that, I found this mystery kitchen utensil just laying on some parkway grass that looked like it had never been used by whoever tossed it out:
After bringing it home, taking it apart and giving it a good cleaning, I googled any variety of “Suzuki/counter-mount/hand/manual/grinder/mill” but came up entirely empty. And it’s no help that the small green label on its side is entirely in Japanese. As such, I have no clue what its meshed gears are supposed to munch on. Any ideas?
UPDATE (1:25 p.m.): Additional pics, from above and below.
UPDATE (4:45 p.m.): Jeez. So through my amazing powers of deduction, I finally looked at that little green label for a clue and all I could find among all those Japanese language characters was 0427 (59) 5571, which I hoped might be a phone number. So I googled it: nothing. Then I googled it with “Suzuki” and got a match via a directory page that had a link to the product’s webpage. The company name is Ration Suzuki Institute Inc in the city of Sagamihara, bordering Tokyo. What is it? It’s a juicer.
From a bad translation of its webpage:
Suzuki Juice Machine
Completely crushed cells of vegetables and fruits, because without waste to extract the active ingredient in many yield to make a delicious juice, less destruction of the vitamin.
First impression: Pain in the ass. Here’s a video snippet from the five minutes it took me to juice a pear.
11 Responses to “ The Things One Finds On Pre-Dawn Walks Around The Neighorhood ”
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[...] a pear through the Japanese-made manual juicer I found kicked to the curb Wednesday morning (and had so much trouble not only identifying but then juicing a solitary pear the first time around). I decided to give it another try this morning and I’m pleased to report the process went [...]
Looks like a hand crank meat grinder to me. I’m not familiar with the brand, but have had other brands before that looked very similar. On the end with the clips, is there a removable end plate with holes in it where the product is pushed thru?
ECG, The end with the clips is removable, but strictly for getting the gears out and cleaning them. The food drops out of an opening below the gears. I’ve posted up pics from additional angles so you can see.
Hi Will,
It’s not a meat grinder—those have a metal plate that the meat is pressed through. Likewise, flour grinders have two plates that the grain is forced through (oh how I remember in the hippie days when it was so ‘back to the land’ to (try to) grind your own flour.
The grinding shafts are well-machined quality steel—my first thought was: coffee…or, since the manufacturer is Japanese, perhaps rice? There do not appear to be any places for adjestment of the grinding mechanism, so it looks as if it is for a specific task. The fact that it’s a hand mill means it’s not for large scale use.
The thing that made me think ‘coffee’ was an old German hand mill, but it only had one shaft with the body itself cast iron with the other grinding edges machined in the body. It could be adjusted, though.
The unit looks like it would grind quite finely, so if you ever make espresso coffee, you could try some beans through it..
Good luck with your search and thanks for the mental stimulation!
I was sure it was a sausage grinder, but previous comments suggest otherwise.
Thanks Gabriele and Annika. For lack of whole coffee beans, I attempted to grind up some popcorn kernels as a substitute and the sucker jammed solid. Popcorn kernels seem like they might be harder than coffee beans so I may give that a try.
I look forward to an update. My first thought was meat grinder, but lacking an extrusion hole and cutter it can’t be that.
Once known, post a pic of it in action?
Will do frazgo!
Well – someone DID throw it out in frustration. You could be next!
I woulda guessed meat grinder – it looks like mine. Guess not. From your secondary research try some veg – maybe lemon or watermelon??
Try a visit to little tokyo with it. There’s a lot of little stores there with housewares.
I personally think this is not a complete unit — it looks like there is a missing attachment or something. I like Gabriele’s idea of grinding rice, but I would take it one step further — soy beans maybe, for grinding the beans down to the pulp stage for tofu? Also, I think Eric is right — Little Tokyo would definitely be the place to go for research — maybe to a coffee or tea vendor, or an asian market?
ECG, judging by the picture on the product’s webpage it’s a complete unit. Grinding cooked rice and/or fresh soybeans might work, but for now I’m sticking with juices until I get frustrated and toss it to the curb for the next person.