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Antiques! => Antique Questions Forum => Topic started by: talesofthesevenseas on August 15, 2009, 08:31:17 PM
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In keeping with todays theme of lots of household items, I recently needed to buy a meat grinder and decided to look for a cool old one. I picked this one because I used to guide tours at the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose CA when I was in my late teens.
Here's the Winchester history in a nutshell -
The Winchester rifle was known as the gun that won the west, a huge improvement over the single-shot rifles (someone with more firearms knowledge might want to fill in here.) The Winchester company diversified into other metal and wood products, such as rollerskates and meat grinders.
The son of the inventor was named William Wirt Winchester. He married Sarah Pardee and the two of them had one child. Very suddenly, both W.W. Winchester and the child died, leaving Sarah Pardee Winchester a lonely widow battling depression. Her physician recommended that she go back east and visit her family. She did so, and on that visit she visited a spiritual medium. This medium told her that her husband and child had been killed by the spirits of those killed by the Winchester rifle and that Sarah would be next to die, unless she appeased the spirits. To do that, she had to build a house for the spirits to live in and she had to build on it 24 hours a day, 365 day a year, never stopping.
Poor Sarah believed the medium, and came to San Jose CA where she purchased a small farm house and began to build, and build and build! She actually became a pretty good amature architect by the time of her death in the 1920's. She also invented several household devices. She designed a sink with a washboard molded into the side of it. She designed window latches that were modeled after the cocking mechanism on the Winchester repeating rifle. These can still be seen on the 4th floor of her house. She designed the little brass triangular plates that were used in the corners in old Victorian houses to make it easy to sweep out the corners. She also designed one thing that is still in use today- drawers on rollers. This came about because when Sarah bought fabric for a dress, she would buy the entire bolt so that no one could have a dress that looked like hers. She had to store these bolts of fabric in drawers and because of their weight, she put them on rollers. So when you open your desk drawer Monday morning- you can thank Sarah Winchester!
Sarah was fabulously wealthy, receiving enormous sums of money in royalties from the Winchester rifle and related products. This funded the building and rebuilding of the house, which was designed to encourage the presence of good spirits and frighten away evil ones. There are numerous uses of the number 13, which she believed was lucky for good spirits and only unlucky for evil ones. There are columns installed upside down, doors and staircases that lead to nowhere and many other unusual architectural features. The house is beautiful, filled with Tiffany glass windows and beautiful parquette flooring.
And then there's the ghosts... The house is one that has been believed to be haunted for decades, hence the name Winchester Mystery House.
So back to the meat grinder- I paid $27 for it. The prices are all over the board for these. One sold for $35 a few weeks ago, and I've seen them range from $45 on Ebay to a whopping $250, when most meat grinders go for about $7 to $10. So I feel OK about spending $27 bucks for this one.
My Winchester meat grinder:
(http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x124/talesofthesevenseas/WinchesterGrinder1.jpg)
Up close on the Winchester logo and the W12 model number.
(http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x124/talesofthesevenseas/WinchesterGrinder2.jpg)
The handle with the full name, Winchester Repeating Arms Co, New Haven Conn.
(http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x124/talesofthesevenseas/WinchesterGrinder4.jpg)
The inside of the handle, marked Made in USA
(http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x124/talesofthesevenseas/WinchesterGrinder3.jpg)
View looking down the top
(http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x124/talesofthesevenseas/WinchesterGrinder5.jpg)
Finally, my question is, when was the model W12 produced?
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Thanks for the sharing of the history, didn't know they made meat grinder, Really cool. Beats my keystone meatgrinder, that I got mixed with a box of silverplate flatware on ebay, which ended up being half stainless and a meatgrinder, they got bad feedback. Mine dated about 1930's worth about 5 bucks, hope to find a meatgrinder collector some day, cause it kinda looks ugly upon my shelf ;D
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Hi I love this type of grinder I have a maid of honor 4710-15 and use it all the time. Winchester began production beyond firearms at the close of WWI. 1926-1927 store catalog contained more than 7,000 items. The story of Sarah Pardee is wonderful & sad at the same time. Would love to visit the home as my husband does residential design & construction.
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You and your hubby would love the Winchester house. There are so many bizarre architectural features. Here's the Web site.
http://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/ (http://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/)
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Whoops hit "post" too soon! Thanks for answering the question of the date!
I know the WMH has a pair of Winchester roller skates in the little museum that they have on site. I can't recall if they have a meat grinder or other items in there. Lots of great old rifles.
LOL they used to have this wax statue of Geronimo in there with his arms crossed. One of the tour guides had ever so slightly adjusted the fingers on one hand, so that they were very, very subtly flipping off the tourists!
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Didn't know they made that kind of meatgrinder .
Mine is a W-12(Ga.) Defender .
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LOL @ RJ2!!!
Here's a page with some other Winchester "collectables" including my meat grinder. The Winchester marble is cool!
http://www.neaca.com/Winchester.html (http://www.neaca.com/Winchester.html)
Here's a page about other Winchester products, like skates and even a lawn mower!
http://www.go-star.com/antiquing/cowans_corner0807.htm (http://www.go-star.com/antiquing/cowans_corner0807.htm)
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Been to the home. Quite bizzare. Fantastic pair of yet to be used but never installed Tiffany stain glass French doors. Story goes Teddy Roosevelt visited one time and wasn't let in. I think there is only one photo of Sarah. She was quite the recluse.
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Thank you to all of you for being so welcoming as I am new to this site!! The knowledge you all have gained in your lifetime is wonderful & fascinating. Have tried to join other forums & they will not even acknowledge a question. hope to visit winchester mystery house in the future. Thank you again
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It's great to have you aboard Wendy177! I had the same problem trying to make an in-road on other forums. It can be difficult. What I like about this forum is that the people here give a polite, honest answer, no matter how "un-antique" an item may be, and treat the poster with respect just because they tried. That is a rare thing on the Web!
...And then every now and then we get to share in an "Antique Roadshow Moment"!!
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Yes , wendy177 , welcome to the forum .
Lots of very decent folks here !
BTW - been to the W house tour twice ... I hear it was a great place to be a carpenter (mostly) !
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The Winchester grinder just arrived, and I'm really pleased with the condition. There's no rust, everything turns smoothly, no cracks in the handle. It looks like it spent most of it's life in a cupboard. I didn't really expect it to be this nice. I'm surprised how clean it is, but it still has plenty of character and a nice old-timey squeak when turning! I'm looking forward to using the Winchester to grind apples for cider.
I've got another vintage kitchen item purchase for the pressing phase. After pricing wine/grape/cider/fruit presses, (over $150) I started looking for small-scale vintage or antique alternatives and decided to go with a Wear-Ever fruit press & removable strainer. These seem to have been produced around 1940-1950-ish and for the small scale cider production that we're doing, one of these should do the trick. They are cheap too, under ten bucks.
(http://i.ebayimg.com/04/!BWrut9!BWk~$(KGrHgoH-CQEjlLl1C88BKYnhFZ4DQ~~_35.JPG)
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I thought these wear-ever presses were only used for soft fruits .... or am I on some other planet ?
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I'm planning to use this after the apples have gone through the Winchester grinder, so they'll be mushy by that point, and the mush will be put into a muslin bag before squeezing with this press. I think this will work, but I haven't actually tried it yet. If any of you have made cider, clue me in, I'm a first-timer.
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I've done it in many old-time methods , but the last few years I just borrow a friends electric juicer & run the juice through a boiled piece of cheesecloth (doubled or tripled) in a large screen collander .
(She got the juicer from c'slist for $15).
After all the years & hassle of doing it manually , I'm sold on the electric method - esp. because I deep-freeze the stuff right away (cover the liquid with saran wrap first, in lge-mouthed containers) & enjoy the uncooked cider more .
Using a juicer really minimizes waste , v.s. hand methods & makes great compost .
It's easy to make flavor-blends in this way that the cooked apple can't compare with , flavor & richness-wise .
It still tastes like fresh-pressed after thawing .
You can pressure cook/cook the juice in Ball jars & so forth , if you're thinking/must have pasteurized .
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Well, part of the fun of it for us I think will be in the effort. My hubby has become disabled in the last couple of years and is none to happy about it, so I've started trying to have more things at home for him to keep busy with. We're growing our first apple trees in containers, doing a bit of "backyard farming", and giving the yard a makeover to make it nice for him to hang out in while I'm at work. With pressing cider, for us the point is in raising the trees learning about polination and such, and finally, if all goes well, reaping the rewards. I'm thinking grinding and pressing will be part of the fun, so we're looking to go low-tech 1880's style.
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Well , there's that then .
I too once enjoyed such trauma , when making cider .
I used to use a small (about 1-1/2 Gallon) oak wine press with an acme thread and a 2ft. wood handle , with good results . I would line the press with cheesecloth , put in the apple bits , tie the cheesecloth when full & then press it ( clean the cheesecloth by rinsing , and repeat the process ) .
As part of the fun , sometimes the cheesecloth will split & spout apple-mush geysers .
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LOL that's exactly the idea!! The more trauma the better! Easy I can buy at the store! ;D I did see a nice Pat. 1884 press the other day that I was considering. It was much like a wine press, with the T-style screw, but the upper press plate was curved to grip the back of an orange and then the bottom plate was a ring. I'm not quite sure how it worked but It looked like part was missing. Although it looked like it could have been quite do-able with a bit of jury-rigging.
On the cloth bags, have you tried the ones they sell online? I think they are nylon or something? I had read that muslin also works.
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My goodness Talesof....you must have a heck of alot of energy and time.....
I was raised in the country and was raised to do all of these things the old fashioned way....but you have a new-fangled way of putting a twist on 2 old things....
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Well, projects help give hubby some quality time since he's stuck home while I'm gone all day. Better than having him playing Warcraft, LOL