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Laburnum Salt and Pepper Mills

Neil

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Jim,

Thanks for your comment, I have some more to do tomorrow, I'll take some photos and do a tutorial if you like, there are no instructions with them, or most of the others on the market for that matter and there are a few tricks to make life easier.
 

paulm

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They are lovely Neil and a tutorial would be great. I fancy having a go at these.
 

Jim

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Oct 19, 2011
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Jim,

Thanks for your comment, I have some more to do tomorrow, I'll take some photos and do a tutorial if you like, there are no instructions with them, or most of the others on the market for that matter and there are a few tricks to make life easier.

Neil, a tutorial would be great, i have a few of these kits myself that i keep looking at ... :whistling:
 

Woody

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Very nice Neil they look superb in fact they look like two space men with no arms LOL well done Neil they should sell well
 

Neil

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Hi Neil,they loog great,what size of stock do you start with for your pepper mills
Alan

Alan, they are 65mm square, can't remember the length, for a six inch mechanism I think it's a minimum of 8 inches to allow for the spigot and chuck waste, but I'll cover the calculations on the tutorial that I'll post in a couple of days
 

Themackay

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Hi Neil,any suggestions where to source suitable Laburnam also what other timbers would you reccomend for peppermills.
Alan
 

Neil

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Hitchin, Hertfordshire
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Neil
Alan, until the cows come home of their own accord, wood turners will manage to perpetuate myth and rumour about the suitability of woods used in contact with food. To exacerbate this issue the supplies industry has cashed in by marketing food safe oils. This of course implies that all others are not food safe??!!

Yew and laburnum are the subject of many debates about the toxicity of wood, if you happen to have a long main, are followed by a man with a bucket and whose height is measured in hands, it is a bad idea to eat the foliage of either yew or laburnum, but there is no evidence to suggest that the interaction of food and the dried, seasoned, wood will cause the user to drop alarmingly dead. They are both beautiful timbers, and in the case of yew, has been used in the Middle Ages to make drinking vessels. There was a practice of seasoning yew by cutting it and then tethering it to the banks of a flowing river for a year to assist with the removal of the sap..

There is much seasonal movement in correctly dried holly timber, and this is a timber that I wouldn't use. Any wood used to make salt mills must be thoroughly seasoned as the salt will take up any moisture left in the wood and can cause the wood to contract further and seize the mechanism, apparently!

I have just picked up a billet of splayed holm oak which I am looking forward to making some mills from. I've made them from ash, elm, oak, yew, cherry, laburnum, robin is, apple, walnut, psalter beech, birch, and others.
 
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