I was looking for something for my MIL at Lehman’s the other day. I found some grain mills there and was trying to decide if they were a good deal or not.
I was thinking of a hand crank one. Any opinions?<<<<
Victoria Grain Mill
$44.95
My question is this:
On this grain mill from the above link, can I remove the handle part from the shaft and replace it with a pulley and then run this with a sewing machine motor and attach a belt to turn the pulley???
A small 12 volt motor would be fine, if you could charge the battery in the car.
If it hits hard and their is no electric, then put the hand crank back on and you will then have the best of both worlds.
>>>>Victoria Grain Mill
$44.95<<<<
The Victoria Mill is made in Colombia and is a good mill - for what it is designed for... I just bought one a couple of weeks ago and got it for $29.95 at a Gigante International Hispanic grocery store (run by a nice Chinese couple)
If you are wanting to make fine flour, the Victoria is not the one. It is designed for corn meal and does not grind fine enough for cakes, muffins or light breads or rolls. If you run it through 3 times, it will pass for a nice fine cracked wheat bread, but corn is what it is best for.
As for a motor, it turns too hard unless you put about a 24” pulley on it and minimum 1/4 Horsepower capacitor motor. Also, the shaft is a tapered tri-lobal or three sided affair which doesn’t work well with the round hole pulleys (the pulley would wobble and wear rapidly). In two weeks, I have tried it with hard red winter wheat, soft wheat, corn, popcorn, and even ground up my accumulation of egg shells to feed to the chickens (helps them strengthen shells) it did a fantastic job with the eggshells and corn, worked well with popcorn but was very hard turning. Wheats were medium hard turning (keep in mind that I am 6’2” 250# farmboy type, just to put things in perspective for you.
I have not tried the Family Grain Mill, but am considering it for flour (I currently use a blender). I liked the fact that it had an adapter for the KitchenAid mixer (but mine is only 250W and it has to be at least a 350 watt to use it)
Don’t know if that helps or not, but thought I would pass on my experience.
Granny, for my chickens, I crack corn with my chipper/shredder - I can do probably a ton per hour with it.