We didn't like our hand crank mill. It took a lot of time to get the flour that we needed, and it seemed to stay quite coarse. We also learned that with stone ground flour (vs. steel ground), the stone lets go of small pieces of aluminum that gets into the flour. We also learned that with grinding between two objects creates heat that will lesson the nutritional value in your finished product. We also ended up sifting stuff out of it. We opted for a WonderMill instead (uses something called microburst technology, no friction there), and retired our hand cranked one to the barn for doing the chop fresh for our cow. We are only using the steel plates, and so end up with cracked barley for her. We think that fresh ground is better for her and the milk too.

The hand cranking does build good muscles in the arms.

We find with our electric mill, that 8 cups of grain equals 12 c. of fine flour.

 Im seriously thinking of  grinding my own flours. The stuff I get at the mega store is convenient, except its bleached. That cant be good for ya. What Ive been doing so far is last year I started making grandmothers bread, I thought if I could keep up with my families bread demands and they liked it, Id progress on to doing my own flours.  By the way, they love Gma bread!!! 

It is a major investment. Expensive little buggers. A friend of ours has one and she loves it.  Still debating but would love to hear more. Like…Cindy you go buy it, and we'll share it! Tag your it!

I believe that aluminum is one of the binding agents for the stone. We had read somewhere about this happening (the stones will wear some), and although we couldn't see any flecks, it made us very uncomfortable using it.

We were using a Corona corn mill.