Historical Handmill Making -seeking information about

Years ago, I attended a class on medieval bread making, which included information on making a mill, right down to the best local river beds to find the stones (Western Washington state).
Do you think I can find the handouts from it now?😅
Of course not! 😂

Mind you, I would like very much to join in welcoming Ginny Clark, of Pleasant Hill Grain, to Permies, and look forward to learning more about the beautiful grain mill they have, but I would also like to follow through with making a river stone mill, for teaching purposes.

Anyone have any pointers to help me figure this out?
Much thanks.

Sounds like a fun class to take!

If I remember right, granite is one of the best stones for grinding with. It's solid enough not to wear out easily, and what little does chip off tends to be granular instead of sharp. Some stones like obsidian would break off tiny little razor blades into your flour!

I did a quick search ad found a bunch of Youtube videos on how to make your own grinding stones, but I haven't watched many yet. The few I did watch were set in India, and just showed a barefoot teenager sitting in a pile of rocks with his hammer and chisel, turning out some downright beautiful stones!

I would ask the Native Americans, but I understand that they mostly dealt with acorns (or corn). Still this makes me think of all those large rocks near rivers with little divots where people ground acorns into flour with other smoothed stones. My dad use to have a stone bowl (with three legs) and a stone "pestle" type thing for grinding wheat berries. No, we used it as more of an ornamental thing, but if you had to, you could use it.

The Native Americans used a Metate Bowl to grind their corn.  I had one that we found in a cave years ago but had to leave it behind when we sold our homestead.

I am not sure what kind of rock it was made from though it might have been made of sandstone.  I am sure it was not granite.

It fit this description:

A metate (or mealing stone) is a type or variety of quern, a ground stone tool used for processing grain and seeds. In traditional Mesoamerican cultures, metates are typically used by women who would grind lime-treated maize and other organic materials during food preparation (e.g., making tortillas).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metate

Freddie,
Do you happen to remember where you took this class or who the instructor was? Perhaps we could track that info down and find away to recover the info that way? Sounds like a cool class!

I was curious about the youtube video mentioned above, I'm pretty sure this is the one ("Making of Grinding Stone"):  

IIRC, millstones tended to be either harder types of sandstone or limestone, or built up composites.  But it's been a while since I last toured the local windmill and paid attention to that part of the lecture.

I DID find this page on millstone that might also be helpful:
https://www.engr.psu.edu/mtah/photos/photos_millstones.htm

There's a group of rocks in the UK called millstone grit. The coarser sandstones from the formation were used as millstones. I can't imagine old stones being granite it is incredibly difficult to cut without modern tools. One good way of aging a granite building is to look and see if the stones are natural shapes or cut.