Tuesday, 20 September 2011

Flour!!!

At last, after 4 years of work, we finally milled!

This was the first time since at least 1940 the mill has produced flour
.
We make the final adjustments...


We arrived early to make sure all was well, and made a few minor changes and adjustments. Nick Jones, from Little Salkeld watermill, arrived with two sacks each containing 25kg of grain. After a few further checks, he took us through the process of starting up for the first time. A lot to learn, from how to untie the paper sacks easily rather than fighting them, to balancing wheel speed and grain flow rate to get a good product.

...before Nick Jones arrives
to fill the grain hopper


In the event the product was proclaimed to be good and the whole thing worked smoothly, surprisingly so for a first run. We had a small celebration and carried on milling for a couple of hours. Nick reckoned the system could be run faster to increase output, but that isn't really a problem for us, we don't want tons of the stuff!

The short video shows some of the bits of the process in action, with nice mechanical sounds.

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