Chefcaptain Manual Cast Iron Grain Grinder, Corn Grinder, Food Mill Hand Crank For Wheat Grains Nuts Grinds 1 Lb Per Minute

I am always looking for ways to become more self sufficient so when I came across this grinder I knew I had to have it. I grew corn this year and didn't pick it right away. Instead I left it on the stock to dry out so I could try grinding it by hand. This worked awesome to make grits just from the first grinding. I tightened the grinding plate and ran it through a second and even third time. This made it much finer so I could use it more like corn meal and makes awesome bread and pizza crust when I dust it on the pan. I also tried this with wheat berries and worked pretty well. Didn't end up very fine like normal flour would be but I didn't really expect it to be. Still made good, hearty, rustic type bread though.Pros: Cheap. Efficient. Uses no power. Very durable and well built.Cons: Heavy, wouldn't be good to carry with you if you needed to.

This is just perfect for milling barley or anything you want to crack. I have played with it to get the gap set right, and it works perfect. The shop where I buy my grains can grind grains for free, but now I don't need to grind the whole pile up front and take a chance of them losing freshness. I can now by in the much cheaper bulk sacks, which are not ground for free.As for the item, it's very basic, but very well built. The bolt that holds it to the counter is correctly sized for the item, and the bolt that holds the crank can be replaced with a hex head for using a drill. I pulled the M8x1.25 bolt out and replaced it with a hex head. Now, I can use a drill to mill around 20 pounds of barley in around 20 minutes. It doesn't have a shield, but I just use a plastic container cutout over the outlet. This wouldn't be needed, but with the electric drill, it can really fly out! For 20 bucks, this is really a very good deal. Just remember, since it's cast iron, don't wash it unless you absolutely have to. If you don't dry it out thoroughly, you will get some surface rust. BTW, for reference, the aluminum hopper holds around 2 pounds of barley.It's money well spent.

For what it is advertised to do it does its job well and is durable and well made. This manual grinder does not turn anything to fine flour, but will make a meal or a very very coarse flour (think a rough corn meal from the store). Unfortunately, I wanted to make wheat flour for breads and this grinder was not capable of that task. I tried many of the different strategies posted in the reviews here but none were capable of creating flour.Pros:+ durable construction+ perfect for cracking grains or nuts, making scratch grain, grinding coffee, or a very very rough corn meal for muffins+ is rather quick, thanks to the large grinding plate+ can be modified to work with drills+ comfortable handle (this is important since its a manual grinder)+ securely mounts to the counter or table top. This is very important since you will be applying swinging that handle round and round.Cons:- the biggest con is that it cannot make flour- This needs some sort of sheild around the grinding plate to keep grinding material directed down toward your container. This thing sends out ground items all over the place if you grind to quickly.- has a lot of different screws to adjust to change your grinding pressure. Not very user friendly.- most parts are cast and thus dont fit together perfectly, but hey, its a budget grinder.-its rough anIn summary, if you are looking for a budget grinder to do coase grinds, this is the item for you. If you want an item that looks nice, and grinds flour, this is not the item for you.

I must agree with the person who said this is junk. After spending an hour grinding the mount smooth, replacing the ridiculous eyebolt and washer on the feed screw with a proper metric bolt, and playing around with the settings, I have to say that it's the lowest-quality most-primitive piece of kitchen gear I've ever seen -- "Premium Quality" is a fraudulent claim, but it does grind corn, sort of.Also fraudulent is the "Corona" brand name that Amazon still lists under the item name -- there's nothing in or on the box or the equipment that claims this is made by Corona.Some choice details, on the basis of hours of testing with dry flint corn:1) There are two grinding discs, of course, one is fixed to the grinder case and the other is loosely driven by the crank. The grooves on both discs are cast, not ground, so they're very rough and inconsistent in depth, and there is no way to sharpen them. The movable disc is "floating", so it depends on the corn or wheat material to maintain its angle and spacing from the fixed disc. This almost works, but not quite -- it still lets a LOT of relatively large chunks of grain make it through, and in practice there is no way to completely avoid grinding metal against metal at times when there is very little grain going through. Fortunately, the discs are indeed ferrous (magnetic), so a few iron filings in your food probably won't hurt anyone, might even help some anemic folks. Still, fact is, "fine" grind is impossible, even after re-grinding ten times!2) The shaft of the main feed screw attaches to the handle by a three-sided taper; both parts are cast, not machined. There are three positions you can use to attach the handle. In the first position I tried, the handle hit the hopper, as mentioned in another review, but when I moved to another position, the handle cleared the hopper and worked fine. I added a mark to the handle and the feed screw at the right position.3) However, the eyebolt and dished washer that holds the handle on, were incredibly low quality. The hole in the shaft is tapped for an 8 mm bolt. Unfortunately the bolt was a very sloppy fit, measuring only 7.5 mm diameter, where it should really be about 7.9 mm. At least it was the right thread pitch. Anyway, I replaced the eyebolt and its flimsy washer with a decent-quality hex head bolt and thicker washer, and it now holds the handle on quite firmly.4) On the cast-in clamp that holds the mill to a countertop or table, the top surface has a nasty seam that stuck out about a millimeter. This would put a deep groove in pretty much any countertop or table top that you might clamp onto. (The box warns about this.) So I spent a half-hour grinding off the seam with a bench grinder to make the top surface of the clamp nice and smooth. It now clamps very firmly, and holds the mill in place quite well using the enclosed rubber seat.5) The hopper is ferrous, possibly stainless steel, but is not a good fit on the grinder input opening, so chunks of grain get stuck in the gap. Just a minor frustration, another drawback of the cheap casting.In summary, this knock-off the original Corona model 500 grinder is really pathetic, and would be a waste of time and money for almost anyone. Out of the box, it does not work acceptably, but if you are willing to spend an hour or two modifying the rough casting and replacing one of the bolts, it might work for you. Frankly, I'm sorry I bought the mill, but I think I've learned my lesson: if something on Amazon (especially one of their marketplace partners) seems impossibly cheap, don't order it!