My first hand grinder was for portability, Hario mini slim. It failed after a few brews (the inner shaft just turned inside the plastic burr carrier). I sent it back and the shop sent me a new replacement which did the same thing. Certainly not user error. Just really poor manufacturing. The metal shaft has these "pressed ears / tags" that turn the burr carrier. The 'tags' just aren't big enough to not turn inside and strip the plastic out. My second hand grinder a Porlex mini. I LOVE this hand grinder, it's stainless steel, sexy, fits inside aeropress for travel and grinds like a boss! Funny, it's made very much the same as the Hario, but just seems of much higher quality. I still use it regularly. The Spong is interesting. I can't say I'm a collector but I stumbled across it somewhere and started reading up on it. The more and more I read the more I wanted one. I found one locally on gumtree and went for a look. She was asking $65. The pictures looked good in the advert. The fact that the gold paint was still on it was a treat. I emailed her and asked her if the crank turned, she said yes, so I went for a look. When I walked in the door she had it drying on the kitchen dish rack, she'd washed it. It was really clean. BUT as you can imagine, you wet them and they rust up. As I was looking at it, she said "you can take it for $40". WOW, I was going to bargain her down to $55. hah. There's no place for it in the kitchen sadly as I have two small kids who will play with anything within reach, and a "mostly-understanding" wife who would kill me seeing it attached to the stone benchtops. So it's mounted in the garage at the moment. Still easy to get to and use. I love how beasty the thing is, and how easy to use. drop beans in and crank, It's VERY easy and pretty fast. It retains pretty much NO grinds inside. On the weekend I enjoyed a couple of syphon brews and Aeropress brews all with spong-ground coffee 🙂 If I "stumble" across other sized spongs I might have to check em out hahaha
