Bicycle-powered grain milling

I have a Retsel/wondermill junior type hand-crank grain mill and have noticed that there is a bicycle adaptor for it - it looks like a sprocket and I'm guessing it would work by getting some bike chain and attaching this to the mill sprocket and the bike sprocket.

Would this work with any old exercise bike? Is there anything specific to look out for? Or will does it need a normal bike some kind of stand to stop it from moving?

Has anyone here used this kind of setup for milling? What were your experiences? Is it faster to mill with this rather than hand crank? Is it possible to get fine-milled flour on the first pass?

I hooked up a exercise bike to a hand cranked generator. Exercise bikes do not have chains. I had to tear apart the front of the bike to hook up the belt from the gen to the bike. Get an old bike with a chain and you can always get a stationary hook up so the rear tire is off the ground so you don't ride off into the sunset while grinding =O

Thanks for sharing. A nearby tip shop has lots of regular bikes so I should be able to get one of those easily. How would I go about making it stationary? Is there a particular kit to look out for that will make that possible? Or a simple modification?

Hi Kate,
you might want to look into Mayapedal. They have instruction manuals on exactly what you are looking for.

http://www.mayapedal.org/machines.en

And here a video

I did this with my mill...

I stopped after I found my vitamix does this faster than me :-)

https://odysee.com/@Marthale7:f/country-living-grain-mill-modification:e

Kate -- don't know if you've tried your mill already, but I have a photo and gif of my bicycle-powered flour mill in another thread. It works great! Heaps faster than manual milling, but you do need to take care that you're not running it so fast it overheats -- it's possible to damage your mill.

Best of luck!