During the industrial revolution machines were developed for agricultural use. Many of these have been produced in model form, traction engines, stationary engines, threshing machines etc. Once traction engines and stationary engines were introduced into farming then these could be used to drive a whole range of machinery, and a machine which appears to have been neglected by the model engineer, is the engine-driven grinding mill. With the introduction of these machines, farmers were able to grind their own corn for use as animal feed, removing the need to cart the corn to the local water or windmill to have the corn ground, often in return for a percentage of the crop.

During the late 1800s Henry Bamford and Sons, Uttoxeter, manufactures of agricultural machinery, produced a range of grinding mills. The machine used as a basis for this project now stands rusting away in the corner of a farmyard in Wales, filled with flowers.  In preparation for starting this project many photographs were taken, together with the main dimensions of the various parts.

To make the model one eighth scale was chosen, which allowed a working model to be made without going down to watchmaking sizes, for example half inch bolts on the actual machine became 10BA on the model.

Before any work could be started drawings were produced, based on the photographs and measurements taken from the original grinder, using a CAD program. The main material used is brass, mostly from stock collected over the years, this unfortunately does appear as different colours on the model.

When the original grinder was built, iron castings were used for the majority of the components.  However, for this model components were either machined from solid, or fabricated from brass silver soldered together.  Fabricating components from separate small parts silver soldered together, are quite difficult to hold in place while being heated, this was overcome by using 12BA brass countersunk screws, which were trimmed off after the joints had been completed.

Part two here.