Wonder Mill Junior hand crank mill research

We're looking at hand-mills and are sort of homing in on the Wonder Mill Wonder Junior Deluxe PLUS. We currently grind masa (by far our greatest grinding need) by running nixtamalized corn through a meat grinder attached to the stand mixer and then through a Victoria mill. We currently grind dry grain (wheat, rye, corn) in the dry-bladed VitaMix blender. We're looking to improve our kit with something that does both of these well. (It would have to be at least as good as what we have in every particular and better in some ways.)

Since we're mostly at the stage of evaluating the Wonder Junior, I came to Permies and searched for discussion of it and now I'm organizing the hits:

Directly relevant threads:
Do you grind grains? - mention
Wondermill Jr - augers
Anyone own or recommend a grain mill? - mention 1, mention 2, mention 3, mention 4
Grain Mills - mention 1, mention 2
Home Flour Milling and Meat Grinding - mention 1, mention 2, mention 3

Tangentially relevant mentions:
Best homestead conveniences - mention
pedal powered Wondermill Jr

Cool barely-related threads:
Socca- and what is considered bread anyway? - mention
Hulling Buckwheat or Confectionery Sunflower Seeds At Home?
Piteba oil press

If anyone has any experience with the Wonder Junior beyond what's been discussed in these threads, I'd love to read what you have to say.

I'd been hoping for some new feedback, but we've pulled the trigger and ordered one. I'll be back over the next few weeks to report on our milling adventures. :)

Hey Christopher, any luck yet? I have found some mentions of using a Country Living for masa, but I have not tried it yet. I am curious to know of your results. Are you growing your own flour corns, or purchasing from masienda? Edit: I looked at the date more closely, and you only recently ordered it. Looking forward to hearing your results!

We have now used this mill a handful of times. It is wonderful for grinding wheat and rye -- the product is essentially perfect and way better than what we got out of the Vitamix. And it's terrible for masa. My wife is still working on figuring out how to make it work, but I think I've decided it's not going to and the Victoria mill is just better in every regard.

I use a modified Victoria Mill. Using a diamond wheel on a 4 1/2 grinder to grind the burrs flat. and then few thousands concave, leavng  a one quarter inch wide perfectly flat area at the perimeter. Use Prussian Bluing, a flat reference plate and Dremel toll with 1" Wheel for this. Grind the grooves with the Dremel to make a sharp edge on the side of the groove where the grain is cut. There should be NO GROOVNG in this area.
Control grain flow from the hopper as follows. Make a five inch diameter disk from 1/4 inch
plywood. Cut a 3/4 in. hole at the center. From hardwood doweling, make a taper- 7/16 at the end increasing to 9/16 one half inch from the end. Suspend it with a threaded rod and crosspiece on top of the hopper. With the small end of the dowel at the top of the plywood, no grain should flow. If the small end is lowered to the bottom of the plywood, flow will be more than the grinder can process. Grain should flow only when the mill runs. I cut 1/2 inch deep slots at the top of the hopper. If the crosspiece sits in the slots grain can flow. When on top, it will not flow.
I use a 750 RPM drywall mud drill. You MUST use the side Handle for control. I insert a wooden mop handle and firmly support it. I believe the best way to fit the mill to the chuck is to grind a diameter that cleans up and fits the drill.
For this, Clamp the mill mouth side down to a bench. Grind a diameter about one inch long.
The drill can easily be overloaded.  A clamp on ammeter costs less than a drill.
Note where the main shaft meets the 1/2 ball. I smoothed a piece of a file and placed that side next to the ball.
This machine makes nice flour at a good rate, Bran is fine and cost is about $150. The burrs should be adjusted tight. The hard iron will not wear.

I think the wonder junior is the hand-crank mill that I have (also called Retsel mini ark or survival ark).

For large amounts of grain I don't think it's a very good mill, mainly because it does not have a flywheel, so cranking is less efficient than it is for a flywheel one like country living or grainmaker.

It's really hard to mill spelt and rye with this mill. Wheat is not so bad, but it still mills wheat too course for cakes and biscuits. Buckwheat and oats go fine in it though.

Andrew -

Could you post a photo or two of the modified mill?  I think I mostly followed your verbal description, but am a little fuzzy on the details of regrinding the burr plate.  A picture worth a thousand words, etc.

Perhaps we could also explain, for those who are unacquainted, that Prussian blue is a chemical precipitate, blue in color, which has a fairly tight distribution of particle sizes.  It makes a very nice blue oil paint when mixed in an oil carrier, but is used by mechanics and machinists to check fits between parts, to very close tolerances (due to the small particle size) in places where you can't otherwise see or measure.  Practically, one smears a thin layer on one of the parts, places the parts in contact, separates the parts, and then looks for places the blue paint transferred from one piece to the other.  The locations with blue on them are high spots, which can be removed (by grinding, hand scraping or whatever), then it's lather-rinse-repeat.

We just used this process at work a couple of weeks ago to ensure that the telemetry pack we were fitting to a gear (actually, several of them) only touched at the intended mounting locations and nowhere else.  After discussing with the machinist, we decided that this was the surest way of verifying that we had sufficiently cleaned up the rough forged surface of the gear webs.

Using Prussian blue is old fashioned tech, but is still very useful (if a bit messy - the Prussian blue tends to get everywhere if you aren't careful).  There are other "transfer media" (as Prussian blue is classified) as well - compounds of chromium and lead, finely ground - but Prussian blue is a common, non-toxic one.  For very close fitting of parts (to millionths of an inch) I've seen references in old (WWI era) machinist's manuals to using naphtha as the transfer medium (which will evaporate, so quick work is needed).  Surprisingly, with skilled hands (which I personally don't have), a good scraping hand can work to precision tolerances which far exceed the precision for commonly available machine tools, entirely by hand methods.  If anyone is curious about this, I can recommend tracking down a copy of "Foundations of Mechanical Accuracy" by Moore, which will provide more than enough for even most engineers on the process of bootstrapping mechanical precision from nothing.

Kate Downham wrote:I think the wonder junior is the hand-crank mill that I have (also called Retsel mini ark or survival ark).

For large amounts of grain I don't think it's a very good mill, mainly because it does not have a flywheel, so cranking is less efficient than it is for a flywheel one like country living or grainmaker.

It's really hard to mill spelt and rye with this mill. Wheat is not so bad, but it still mills wheat too course for cakes and biscuits. Buckwheat and oats go fine in it though.

It's interesting to consider how great a role context plays in evaluating something like this. I'm sure you have a lot more experience than I do, but having moved from grinding flour in a Vitamix blender to grinding it with the WMJ, it gives tremendously improved quality without the horrible noise.

We have also since I started this thread, upgraded our masa-grinding game to an electric Nixtamatic mill which is a dream (except for needing another rolling table in the kitchen dedicated to this machine).

I just posted new ideas for my modified mill on my Facebook page. It is much easier to make and produces top notch flour at a good rate. In my view there is no mill like he one I describe
Andy Itzov

Andrew Itzov wrote:I just posted new ideas for my modified mill on my Facebook page. It is much easier to make and produces top notch flour at a good rate. In my view there is no mill like he one I describe
Andy Itzov

Andy -

Do you have a link?  I'd really like to see what you've done.

Kevin