Or maybe I should title it “how NOT to make fresh cornmeal” Back at the main show in August the fellow who has a 10hp Russell Portable steam engine lamented that there was nothing for his engine to run. So my friend Kim and I said we would run the club’s grinder for the fall show if he wanted to power it. We got the director’s approval, and made some requests for all those little odds and ends you need for such a project. Other commitments kept us from getting there before dark of Friday, so we had to rush around a bit on Saturday morning. Now the thing has been run exactly ONCE the entire time the club has owned it, so nobody really remembered how it was supposed to go together. The first project, setting and leveling the mill went pretty fast and easy since it is mounted on a cart with legs… THEN we noticed that the belt between the two counteshafts had come apart… A leather belt with a glued splice wet n moldy to boot… I scrounged up a short bit of canvas belt and made another one rather than fool around with the mess. The next project was the shaker/sifter – nothing like trying to put something together with NO directions and a couple pieces missing. We finally managed to get the thing in somewhat working order (by only a bit after NOON!) belted it up and tried it, only to discover we were turning it BACKWARDS (Did you know that burr mills kind of plug up and jam when you run them that way?) Nooo problem take the twist out of the belt and try again…only took backing off the plates a few turns and 3 or 4 minutes to clear it… First couple pounds we ground we had to throw away (we figured we would because of all the junk that the critters had hoarded inside the mill while it was in storage), then, wonder of wonders, the thing worked – well except for a slipping belt. … Speaking of belts, we were reminded to put up police tape because 2 spectators actually walked straight into the belt – luckily NOT while it was running! By our third grind on Sunday afternoon we had it working nearly flawlessly…just in time to clean it up, tear it apart, and put it away. We ground a total of 50 pounds of fine cornmeal (almost corn flour), not much, but it wasn’t a very busy show, either… Kim says she had fun and wants to do it all again next year and maybe even at the August show as well. This is the club’s Sears-Roebuck 12 inch burr mill (Which I’ve been told was made by Meadows and is pretty rare, year unknown)
Which was SUPPOSED to be powered by an 1898 10HP Russell portable…except curiously it looks rather more like our '37 Allis WC.
(The fellow who owned the Russell (a) forgot, or (b) didn’t think we were serious – he gave both reasons, depending who asked. ) NEXT time, we’ll see if we can sweet talk my father into letting us use Pap’s 1/2 scale steam traction engine instead of relying on someone else… I almost forgot to mention, Allis WCs also seem to start and run a WHOLE LOT better on more or less fresh gasoline than on some red stuff that my father CLAIMED was gas (dead saw gas? gas/diesel maybe?), and after you let almost a PINT of water out of the carb and sediment bowl (simply amazing what ends up in there when it sets outside unsupervised for a couple months – at least they didn’t steal the mag, I guess… BUT BTW-- If I EVER catch the guy(s) who sliced a nice clean straight line down the radiator fins with a pocketknife (which also punched a pinhole in the bottom tank) sometime between August 3 and Saturday morning – we’re gonna have us’n a three legged race to the hospital to get my boot removed from their…
