Microbus Brewery: Grain Mill Build

My lovely wife bought me a CrankAndStein 2D grain mill for my birthday. This is a bare bones grain mill, so I building my own cabinet and hopper. I tend to forget to document the process when I do projects like this. This time I'm trying to remember to take pictures along the way so hopefully it will help anyone else thinking of building a grain mill.

My design calls for a simple box frame welded out of 1.5" 16 gauge square tubing. The mill is mounted to 3/4" oak plywood which is mounted to the top of the tube frame. The bottom shelf is made out of the same oak plywood and provides a place to mount the motor and place a 5 gallon bucket for catching the crushed grains. Mounting the motor on the bottom shelf lowers the center of gravity and makes things more stable. The mill is powered by a furnace blower motor I got off of KSL.com a couple years ago. The motor is 1/4 hp 1750rpm so in order to bring the rpm's down, I'm using a 12" sheave from Zoro Tools. Normally you'd also want to use a 1.5" sheave/pulley on the motor. My motor came with an adjustable pulley, so I'm going to try it first. If it doesn't work I'll order a 1.5" replacement.

I started out by laying out the top piece of plywood. I cut one hole/groove to provide clearance for the 12" sheave. I also cut out the a hole below the mill for the grain output and drilled mounting holes. Top edges of the plywood were eased over with my router using a 1/4" round over bit. The edges on the bottom shelf were also eased over and notched in the corners to fit between the frame posts.

Next the mill was test-fitted to the plywood top. This is when you find out how well you measured and how precise your cuts are. Fortunately I didn't have any issues, but it's probably worth mentioning...measure twice, cut once.

Next I cut the tubing to size and started tacking things together. I ran out of tubing on day one, so the supports for the bottom shelf have to wait another week.

Click here for part 2.
Click here for part 3.