I have a question about stuffers in general. I have the 7# stuffer with the helical gears on top, inexpensive and does a nice job. However when doing smaller diameter snack sticks it become a struggle to rotate the handle to apply pressure to the mince. Do the two speed stuffers have some sort of gear reduction built into the transmissions?

Little Baby Teddy I appreciate the help. I had read that on the product page. I was trying to determine if the gear ratio was different on the units with the gear case rather than the helical geared units. I have read posts where folks had done 16mm snack sticks and claim the stuffing process was effortless! This is not the case with my cheap little stuffer!

Brianh Thanks so much for your help! I clamp my stuffer to the edge of the counter top and it is rock solid but it does take considerable effort to crank the handle using the smaller casings. I wouldn’t think it would be an engineering marvel to make the gear reduction system for these stuffers!

I cooked a 5 pound batch of snack sticks yesterday and they look and taste good but there is no snap to casing and they are very chewy and rubbery. I followed the recipe listed on the seasoning jar and also added some ECA prior to stuffing and smoking. I weighed the seasoning to 4 ounces and then changed the scale to grams and weighed the ECA to 16.9 grams.
During the cook i ramped up the temps from 100 to 170 over the course of 7 hours until they were measuring 155 on my inkbird thermometer.