White Mountain PBWMIMH412-SHP Appalachian Series Wooden Bucket 4-Quart Hand Cranked Ice Cream Maker

Great tasting ice cream! Hard work at first but read UPDATE!
**************SEE BELOW FOR UPDATE*************
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"...

Nice Ice Cream Maker
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...

Disappointing
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.

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