This is the Cadillac of ice cream makers. Made to traditional quality standards. The canister that holds the ice cream mix is made of stainless steel. It will never rust like traditional steel with nickle plating canisters. It transfers heat(in this case cold) much faster than steel so the mix turns to ice cream much faster. It is a long tall cylinder, maximizing the surface contact with the ice/salt mix accelerating the freezing time even more. The gearing is steal with bearing and turning the crank is smoot and easy. And; they sell replacement parts in the event that you loose or break something. They include an old time recipe book with recipes for 2, 4 and 6 quart batches. Using it reminded me of the the little red hen grinding wheat, making flour, and then making bread. No one wanted to help turn the crank. But once it was done, people lined up around the block for the ice cream.
I gave this charming little bucket two stars only because it makes really good ice cream at a sort-of quick pace as compared to other churns I've used. It it weren't for that it would have gotten one star. The good ice cream this makes comes at a relatively heavy price. Read on to learn why.
My first impression upon unboxing it was that it looks to be a relatively solid device overall (the churn, not the box) yet sort of trying too hard to have a sense of hand-crafted charm. The stainles steel tub that goes inside the bucket, as well as its inner workings seem well made and are of a clever design. I suspect these are the reasons for the unit working as quickly as it does more quickly than other churns I've used. There's also quite a few recipes included a couple of which I've tried and they are very good.
For the top dollar I paid, however, I expected this to have a little more of a "hand-crafted" aura to it, like it's advertised to have. The bucket looks that way from a distance, but up close it looks like a line-assembled item. It actually comes with a warning that if it's not treated correctly and according to the insructions that the bucket could leak brine all over. Now that's a piece of charm I didn't expect!
The crank mechanism is built like a tank (a poorly designed one, however) and herein lies my biggest problem. The fit of this device to the bucket is POOR in my particular case. It doesn't stay on well at all. This is most certainly aggravated by the fact that with nearly every crank, the gears bind up like the devil and try to pull the gear unit off the bucket or upset the bucket altogether. It makes it extremely difficult to use. I searched all through the manual and on the internet for a way to adjust the gears or some other way to alleviate this terrible binding, but I came up with nothing.
So now my usual ice cream churning strategy requires two people to properly turn out a tub. The person cranking (usually me) nearly reaches muscle-failure doing it. With one hand I hold the gear mechanism to the bucket and crank with the other. I must have someone hold the bucket firmly to the table because the gears bind up so badly that the momentum of cranking nearly upsets the bucket with every crank. I imagine my neighbors probably get a kick out or this circus scene by now, but I assure you, I don't.
In case it was misunderstood, the reason for my peculiar two-person setup is because with nearly every crank it's necessary to "un-bind" the gear mechanism as it is turned. This can most often be accomplished by stopping and turning the crank in the other direction. Sometimes, however it becomes so bound up that it needs to be removed from the bucket to be remedied. It's frustrating. The first time made ice cream I made the mistake of holding the gear unit with my bare hand. I worked up a couple really good blisters this way and subsequent churning sessions were done wearing heavy gardening gloves.
I'm not sure what I'll do about this, if anything. It sort of seems like maybe I have a defective churn but my wife insists that making handmade ice cream is a lot of work. Well, to my mind, if it's THIS much work you can have it. I think my bucket is defective. I'd like to get rid of it because it doesn't work right and it takes up so much space in the closet but alas I dropped a couple C-notes on this thing so I guess maybe I'll stick with it for another season. Who knows, maybe it will get easier as time goes on? For now, painful, frustrating ice cream is my lot.
Cheers!
UPDATE: 18 May 2013
Okay, so I originally ripped this bucket for being, A) not as well made as one would expect for the substantial, top-o-the-line cost and, B) very hard to use. Well, I can't honestly change my comments too much about the first fact, although I HAVE used this bucket more now and I have NOT yet experienced the potential phenomenon referred to in the instructions as a "leaky bucket". That's a positive. The main reason I came back to update was to let everyone know that the trouble I was having with the crank mechanism has been solved. I noticed underneath the crank/churn mechanism a couple screws sitting in what sort of looked like adjustable slots. I loosened these screws and slid the entire plate underneath in the opposite direction from where it was originally placed. Next time I tried the machine, "Eureka!, it works!!" Now THIS was the way this thing was designed to operate! Sliding that plate must have tightened up the gear mechanism underneath. No more binding, no more bucket tipping, no more heavy gloves, no more blisters. A child could use this thing now. In fact, my 8 year old has and enjoyed it (until he got bored, which wasn't long). I searched all through the instructions more than once and did not see this procedure mentioned anywhere. I would feel sort of bad for giving this thing such a ripping originally but as far as I'm concerned, it's the company's fault for not warning us about this. Such a simple fix for such a huge problem. Wow! So I don't feel that bad.
Cheers!
Buy White Mountain Appalachian Series Wooden Bucket Hand Cranked Ice Cream Maker Now
Directions easy, recipes great and results fantastic. The quality of White Mountain's ice cream maker is better than we expected hope to be using this machine 20 years from now.Recently purchased and used for the first time on Super Bowl Sunday to make ice cream for friends.I found that the hand crank would jam incessantly. If I applied pressure in a certain way on the handle, this would reduce the jamming but this was inconvenient. Without the pressure, the crank would jam again.
I took the simple gear mechanism apart to see what was wrong. The gears fit together very poorly and have a lot of play. The gear that turns the cannister has only about 1/8" of overlap with the gear on the handle. The result is minimal engagement on the teeth of the gears which results in jamming.
I intend to call white mountain tomorrow to find out if there is a fix for this, however, it seems to be more of a manufacuturing flaw rather than a defect. I remember my parents had one of these when I was a child and the gears were much more solid and better made.
All in all, I am disappointed and cannot recommend this product given the cost.
Want White Mountain Appalachian Series Wooden Bucket Hand Cranked Ice Cream Maker Discount?
This is a well built ice cream maker that should last for years. Before purchasing I had read in reviews here on Amazon and on other websites that the inner gear mechanism grinds and drops metal shavings into your ice cream, so before every batch we make we wrap the metal post that fits into the gear mechanism with a thick layer of plastic wrap which catches the metal shavings keeping them from falling into the goods. You have to wrap the plastic so that it essentailly plugs the hole in the metal lid and it waorks great, not a flake of metal in the ice cream yet. I guess this is the poor man's version of the plastic sleeve that an earlier reviewer talked about rigging up for his machine.The only reason I gave this 4 stars instead of 5 is that a $200 hand crank ice cream maker should not have to be modified to work correctly. It should be perfect straight out of the box. Nevertheless, this machine is near perfect and my family has had a lot of fun making homemade ice cream with it.
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