Johnny Apple Sauce Maker

There are lots of reviews on this, mostly positive. This is going to be more of a product comparison than a review... After using the Norpro version (which sucks) for 2 years I finally broke down and bought this one... wow... I wanted to write a review last week before I even used it because it screams "BETTER QUALITY" right out of the box. Now that I've used it I'm going to do a product comparison.Overall: This thing is a breeze compared to the Norpro. The crank turns effortlessly, the tomatoes feed easily, and most of all, it's MUCH easier to clean. The components are MUCH better built than the Norpro, you can tell Victoria knows what they are doing and they do it right; Norpro seems to just want to make terrible copies of other products to make a quick buck...Base:-Lets start at the bottom; the clamp. The Norpro routinely comes loose from the table and wobbles, the Victorio doesn't. Last night I processed 15 gallons of tomatoes into 8 gallons of sauce and didn't have to mess with the Victorio clamp a single time. The Norpro clamp is just a small screw with a "foot" on it, the Victoria has a well-made screw with a large "foot" for squeezing. The Victorio "foot" slides on the cast aluminum base so that it doesn't wobble around. The "feet" that contact the top of the table are also much better designed. Not only are they larger than the Norpro, they also have proper gussets so they don't flex/bend/break as easily; this means more stability.-Height: I didn't measure my Norpro but judging by the size of bowl that fits under the waste chute the Victorio sits higher. Dealing with the waste on the Norpro was a continuous hassle. Dealing with the waste on the Victorio was a "set it and forget it" type affair; I set up a bowl and didn't have to touch it until I was done making sauce.-Axle Hub: Due to poor design on the Norpro the axle "floats" in a bronze bushing, as the auger pushes back and forth the axle moves with it. Combine that with a crappy chrome-plating job on the axle and you get a scratched up bronze bushing. A scratched up bronze bushing means you get a cut-up o-ring, and a cut o-ring means you get a continuous flow of juice out the axle. The Victorio is MUCH better designed. The auger floats on the axle and the axle is stationary in a nylon bushing. This means the o-ring doesn't get cut up (it still leaked a little bit, but not nearly as much as the Norpro). The stationary axle in nylon bushing is MUCH more robust, you can feel it...Auger/Screen:-The auger and screen are also much better designed. With the Norpro the auger's taper matches that of the screen, which means not only is it much harder to feed the tomatoes through because they are being compressed instantly in the first inch or so of the auger, it's also possible to "lock" the auger into the screen. If that happens you must disassemble and pound it out. The Victorio auger has less taper than the screen which means the tomatoes are progressively compressed and it's much harder to "lock" the auger up. This was all very evident when actually using the sauce maker. The crank turned MUCH easier than the Norpro and I think a LOT of it had to do with the more efficient auger/screen design.-The auger itself has a cool feature that the Norpro doesn't; it has notches cut into the first few spirals to help macerate and grab the tomatoes and pull them into the auger. This helps a LOT. With the Norpro I HAD to cube my tomatoes so they would feed easily and so they wouldn't explode and spray juice back out. With the Victorio you can leave your smaller tomatoes whole and the "notches" will rip them open and pull them into the auger.-The screen... WOW!!! First of all it's stainless (vs. the chromed steel of the Norpro), but that's not the feature I'm impressed with. The Victorio screen is designed to be cleaned MUCH easier than the Norpro. The Norpro screen has a rolled & flattened seam which means you get 4 layers of screen material on the seam and the inner layers get packed full of pulp that is impossible to clean out. The Victorio is an over-lapped and seam-welded screen which means there are only 2 layers of screen material (MUCH easier to clean out). The mounting flange is also much better. The area where the screen is attached to the flange on the Norpro lends itself to getting jammed full of pulp that is, once again, difficult to clean. The same area on the Victorio is much smoother/flatter and no pulp gets locked in behind the screen.-Waste shield: the Norpro doesn't even have this. The Victorio does. The Norpro would always have issues with waste (seeds/skin) falling off and landing on the sauce shield/chute (it would get in the sauce if you didn't catch it soon enough. Not only that but you could only fit a small bowl under the end so it had to be continuously dumped/moved so it wouldn't overflow. The waste chute on the Victorio made life a breeze; combined with a slight taller base and the waste chute I was able to fit a large bowl under the end and I didn't have to deal with the waste until I was completely done.-Sauce chute: it looks the same, but it's not. The Norpro sauce chute is fixed position; you can't change the angle at which it lies. The Victorio can be rotated as far as you like. This proved beneficial because I sauce directly into a 5-gallon bucket. Also, due to the higher efficieny auger I found that sauce frequently wanted to spray out of the screen when I was first getting started (before the holes started to fill up with fibrous bits). I just turned the sauce-chute straight down which kept the sauce from spraying everywhere...Other bits:-Hopper: Not a lot to say about this, the design is roughly the same as the Norpro, the only difference is that the Norpro hopper is cheap and flimsy, the Victorio is not flimsy.-Plunger: Not much difference except the Victorio is slightly more robust.-Crank: The Norpro crank has a nut that holds it on, the Victorio doesn't. This sounds like a point for the Norpro but it's not. I didn't have any problems with the crank on the Victorio, it slides into the axle and that's that. The nut on the Norpro was always working loose which would make the handle loose and wobbly...All in all I'm impressed. I feel like this sauce maker is an excellent buy. It's not only cheaper (amazon price for Victorio vs. local price for Norpro), it's better quality, better design, and will save you time. Don't waste your money on the Norpro junk, just get the real thing from the start.

I promised someone I'd come back and review the model 250 when I got mine. Here's the update--it works just as well as the old model. The table clamp is better, but the way the screen attaches is worse, since you have to grab onto it to take it apart now. It leaks just as the old model did, but a little less. All in all though, it works like a charm and turns out a beautiful job with little work. The review below still stands for the newer model.I can a LOT of tomatoes. This year I did 30-50 pounds a week, all summer. My old process: wash tomatoes. Cut slits in the bottom of tomatoes. Dunk tomatoes in boiling water. Once the skins split, dunk in ice water. Peel the tomatoes. Cut out the core. Cut off green shoulders. Cut off bad bits. Put tomato in saucepan. Crust tomatoes with potato masher. Cook down the tomatoes, process in water bath canner. This takes ALL DAY.Then a friend took pity on me and loaned me her Victorio Strainer. It's at least 30 years old, probably older and still in great shape. The first time I used it, it was like the heavens had opened and angels began to sing. Here's my new process: Wash tomatoes. Cut off bad bits. Cut tomato in half or quarters. Run through the strainer. Cook down and process. DONE. The resulting puree is gorgeous and seed and peel free. I can use tomatoes with blossom end rot--just cut that bit off. I can use all my cherry tomatoes that I could never preserve before. There is almost no waste--after you run the tomatoes through once, dump all the peels and cores back in and run them again. You'll be shocked at how much more juice and pulp comes out. The resulting waste is almost dry. I had a gallon of waste from 50 pounds of tomatoes. This thing is completely amazing.It does leak a bit. Don't know if that's because it's old, or it's the nature of the beast. I DO NOT CARE. The screen is a bit of a pain to clean. I DO NOT CARE. This thing is so much faster and so much better than doing it all by hand, these small annoyances are nothing. We also did 100 pounds of Concord grapes for juice with this, and it was awesome. I'm here to buy my own so I can return the one I'm using.Oh, just save yourself the aggravation and buy the accessory pack while you're here. Once you start using it for something like tomatoes, you'll look around and want to do grapes, or salsa, or pumpkin... better get those accessories now.