The Grandaddy of Grinder Estate Sale Finds: $60 Paid!

Hey everyone, welcome to my first post in the Cinnamon Cup Coffee community. I'm really excited to be here and for my first post I want to talk about a new find that I'm really excited for. Over the weekend I went to an estate sale and found a Tomlinson CM-400 Commercial grinder, in someone's house of all places! Maybe I shouldn't be that surprised since I'm going to be using this in my house too lol. Without further ado, lets check this baby out!

Just look at that gorgeous oxblood red 😍

Made by Tomlinson in the 90's this grinder is a bit of a rarity. Featuring conical burrs and a spring system to adjust grind sizes. When I opened it up I was lucky to find the burrs were still in excellent shape. The owner told me he bought it new and only used it in home so I doubt it saw the kind of use most of these did. Finding replacement burrs for this puppy would probably be damn near impossible so let's hope the ones in here last for a long time.

One of the only problems that grinder did have was that owner had broken the lid to the hopper and holy shit was the edge around it sharp. I needed to find a fix for this asap before I cut myself and getting dust in the hopper isn't exactly something I wanted either. Luckily, I found a pot lid that almost fit the bill and matched the rest of the hopper.

The only problem is that the lid was a little loose and with the hopper being glass I didn't want vibrations from the lid to crack the hopper glass. A quick MacGyver fix by wrapping some rubberbands around the rim did the trick. It even adds a nice seal and acts as a gasket. I weigh my beans out before grinding so I don't need to store my whole batch of coffee in the hopper but it's nice to know the rubberband gasket would keep things fresh if I decided to do that.

Performance

Holy cow, this thing shreds. The strong and fast motor grinds beans in seconds. It's still loud, but not as loud as my consumer grade Cuisinart. I've read that this grinder can have issues with getting fine enough grounds for espresso but I easily solved this by grinding down the metal washer that the grind adjustment wheel sits on. With that filed down a bit this grinder made beautiful espresso grounds. I'm mostly a pourover or drip coffee guy so the medium grind was most important to me. The CM-400 did an incredible job for both medium and large grind sizes. Everything was fairly even in size with very minimal fines.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, this was a huge step up from my consumer grinder and I'm so happy to add it to my home brewing collection for the steal of $60. I'm a huge coffee lover but I'm also a huge cheapass lol so finding premium coffee items like this second just doesn't get any better. Just another beautiful day to be alive and enjoying delicious coffee.

What's the best coffee related deal you ever found? I'd love to know what steals other people have come across!