DIY flour mill mounting for compact and safer pantry storage

Introduction

This post is about an alternative DIY flour mill mounting where the motor is located directly below the mill. As a result, the mill can be conveniently stored ready for safer use within a small pantry.

Elsewhere I extol the qualities of wholemeal bread and crumbed eggplant that can be made with home-milled grains and pulses. “It means that I control what is removed from my real food and I don’t have to go back to the shop to pay through the nose for the good stuff that has been ‘stolen’ during the ‘refinement’ of my food!”

After a walking club meeting at my friends home, Graham whispered to me; “Tim would you like to see what I have over here, I think you will be interested in it.” Yes, I certainly was interested as he showed me his lovely shiny flour mill that was beautifully mounted on lovely re-purposed kitchen bench material. It was a work of art, and not unexpected as Graham is a talented artist. It was a much newer and upmarket model than mine with glossy coated aluminium castings, but instantly I could see that the basic mill underneath the gloss was the same as my 45+year old mill. He kindly sent me a photo of the mill to put in my post.

DIY flour mill mounting

Initially, I mounted my mill side by side like Grahams, but mine was much less elegant. I used an old washing machine motor and a piece of wood from an old school bench seat. Yes, it was heavy, awkward to move, ugly and had a rather long exposed V-belt with exposed pinch points.

When I built a small pantry in my kitchen (or more correctly finally got round to ‘completing’ my kitchen… that’s not quite correct either as I see a little patch of unpainted wall in the next photo) I built a compact pantry and reconfigured the mill so that it could live and work, out of sight, in the pantry.

The mounting is still ugly as I quickly made the mill/motor housing out of seven plywood from an old television, leftover building timber, tek-screws and glue. However, it has stood the test of time.

The washing machine motor is in the box below the mill and has an open back for ventilation. The tombstone shaped backboard covers the front of the large v-belt and pully and a light three-ply one covers the back of the belt and pully pinch points.

The mill came with a spun aluminium funnel as shown in the first photo. I replaced this with a funnel made from a large soft drink bottle (Fanta) so that I could load up a lot more grain for milling. To make it fit into the mill opening I needed to grind off most of the screw thread from the bottle.

While milling, the flour comes out all around the grinding stone and it is a bit messy if there is no guard to control it. I used an ice cream container for the guard and cut a hole in it to fit tightly over the circumference of the rear stationary millstone.

The red spatula is used to push the flour away from the exit area below the mill. I ‘parked’ it in a position where it can prevent a spillover when the running mill is left unattended.

A little more about these little flour mills

The millstones can get clogged over time and with some grains. Milling white rice rapidly cleans the stones. “Now there is a good use for white rice!” The inside surface of the millstone is shown below.

Now if you think that DIY flour mill mounting and milling your own flour is a chore, let me tell you that I can mill enough flour to make two loaves in the time it takes to set up the bread maker to make a loaf. The time taken is much less than most people would take to shop for a loaf of bread.

The mill is also great for making bean flour, polenta and rice flour and more. Remember that no one else is nicking off the good bits and selling them back to you as expensive health food.

Here is a little Instagram video of the DIY mounted flour mill operating.

Tim

Addendum

One problem with this compact under over design is that the closeness of the small pulley to the very large one reduces the contact surface of the v-belt with the small pulley and it may start to slip. Adding a trace of honey or jam to the big pulley v-surface (when stopped) will improve the grip and stop the slipping. Putting the sticky material on the big pulley means that it will slowly spread the ‘sticky’ all over the drive surfaces.