Re: Teck 1 gear measurements
My handle is 5-7/8 inches long, and looks exactly like yours does. I ended up mounting mine to a piece of heavy wood that I can clamp wherever I decide I want to shred.
For the sake of Pier, I will advise of my experience. First, Lucas was great to work with - he answered all of my stupid questions (mostly regarding transportation to me, etc.). I suppose I was somewhat 'biased' having used a Teck 1, where you could turn the cutting wheel with one finger. I had kind of assumed that Lucas' machine would be similar. When I first unwrapped it, and tried to turn the handle, I initially thought something was wrong or jammed. There was no way that I could envision just putting this shredder on to a table, and turning the handle to shred tobacco. In any event, my friend and I made a mount for this - basically a piece of 2x4 that is about 12 inches long. I found that the handle of my machine was too long to clear whatever the machine was resting on, and had to be elevated. So, we mounted it on the 2x4 so that the shredder is at the end of the piece of wood. This way, the handle can be rotated fully. The shredder sits on one end of the 2x4, and I can clamp the piece of wood to whatever surface I plan to use, with the other end. If you want, I can post a photo.
Anyway, before I used it, I gave it a light coating with glycerin, using a basting brush (my Xmas turkey will taste great now....). When I did my first few leaves (and fortunately smoked a cigarette from them before I shredded too much) I found that there was a bit of a 'machine oil' taste to the tobacco. The blades were nice and shiny where I had been feeding in the tobacco, and blackish at either end of the rollers - so I imagine that whatever was that blackish stuff (glycerin plus aluminum??) had gone on to the tobacco. I don't know if this is some kind of protective coating or something done in the manufacture of the rollers, but it has now disappeared from the blades (actually, I will admit that I shredded a piece of thin copy paper through the shredder to see if there was any reason why the initial tobacco shred tasted machine-y, which is how I found the black residue. I don't know if my coating of glycerin exacerbated this or not, or if I just put too much glycerin on the rollers initially, as the difficulty in turning the handle confused me. Normally (
) I don't mind the taste of glycerin - it is slightly sweet and not unpleasant.
I would certainly like some more instructions on this, Randy, if you have the patience. For example, I would like to know how you attached your drill after removing the handle. My drill will not catch the round tube that the bolt for the handle threads into, nor will it open wide enough just to catch the bolt, either.
Aside from all my shenanigans - all of which will sort themselves out, I will say this...first of all, Lucas was great to deal with. He must be sitting on top of his computer, because I had barely hit the send button with my queries when I got an answer from him. Second, the quality of the machining of this shredder is top notch - it is really heavy duty, and not flimsy like most of the others that I have seen. Most importantly, the shred is amazingly perfect - not one bit of tobacco went through the rollers unshredded - it was the best shred I ever did. Even with turning the handle manually, I can see how you can shred a load of tobacco really fast with this. Once I get the drill thing worked out, the speed of shredding my week's worth will be lightning, and I will probably end up shredding a lot more in one sitting, as it won't be so tiring to do.
While this shredder was probably more expensive than I initially wanted to spend on a replacement for my Teck 1, I will say that it (at least for now - remember, I've only had this for about 8 hours or so!!) I'm glad I got it.....