Wonder Mill Junior Deluxe hand mill

Frostbite have a look in the Reality Check post by Graynomad we posted some comments & videos
Mr starmade & me looked at all the reviews decided to buy the Diamant just finalising the Amazon deal.
The Grain maker is great as well - made the final decision on best price we could buy either.
I've used hand mills and would not entertain one that we could not connect to a bike or a motor.
A large heavy fly wheel was a priority for us.
We also felt that a mill like this had a potential to become a producer of trade able goods or service.
Curious to hear your take on it

It's good to have a workout so I'm happy with the Wondermill.

I have been researching mechanising it and I may well do one day but that could easily cost another $300 if you buy new parts. I may just get the drill attachment for now and see how that goes. A pulley and motor would be better because it's hands free and I find that on the second pass you have to constantly poke the flour down into the auger, hard to do when your hands are required for something else.

As for the time, I don't know but it seems to take forever. I should be doing another batch soon, I'll try to record how long it takes.

We have a Hawos Billy 100 which is a 250W 240V model. SHTF scenario .... 12V and Inverter. Problem solved (that's for us anyway)

I like the sums too much...
-----------------------------
1 cup of flour = 2min= 120g = 1760Kj
1 loaf of bread = 700g = 10260Kj = 11.56 mins = 48Wh of energy [250W motor]

So assuming the sums are correct you need about 30W of solar panel [and a battery/inverter etc] per loaf.

[edited due to change in figures]

Useful info, thanks for the update gray.

I'm curious if people have had experience with the cheapo mills for $24 on ebay. I get that they're not going to be good for a lifetime, and like good tools, it's worth spending money on something decent, though my thinking is that if they made it through 40kg of wheat, they'd be good for another cheap-as food kit I'm working on. Thoughts?

Edit, seems like it's not really making flour, though it does make course grains fine for making cereal/meal.  Seems that a coffee grinder might do the trick.

Actually it IS possible.   Though it's much slower.  Obviously there's a reason for the better mills.  It's also suggested that you run rice through it first to clean out burs and so on or use a magnet to pick out the loose metal that comes out at first.  Quality it is not



Note the larger hopper size.


Other options I found are
- Mortar and pestle - slow but very fine flour
- coffee grinder, both hand and electrically operated.
- Food processor

Here's the food processor in action,

I would guess the cheap ones are very crap in comparison in reality, have to turn it 4-6 more times to get the same result. Better than nothing and my interest was for a food-kit though not optimum. My research lead me to abandoning storing corn or wheat in this form on the cost/benefit. If you were using it daily/weekly or stored a ton of corn/wheat in a silo, then a good one would be a sound investment and no doubt cheaper.  

It's interesting to look at the descriptions for the hand mills on www.skippygrainmills.com.au/hand.htm as each mill lists the expected output.
Eg A handmill for flour that is about $240 will give about 30-50g flour per minute (depending on the model). So as I use about 600 g flour per loaf that is 20 min of turning! I think I'll stick with my plan of getting a solar generator for my electric mill.