These older mills have peaked my interest lately, at least until I can afford a Pharos. I don't see an electric mill listed as part of your equipment. Do you strictly use vintage manual grinders? Spending over $1000 on an electric just seems ludicrous to me.

Yes, I'm using vintage hand grinders for everything. At any one time, I usually have 2 or 3 mills dedicated to espresso to accommodated different coffees on my two machines, as well as mills dedicated to other brewing methods, like pourover or press. That way I don't ever have to make major changes to the grind settings. The routine isn't for everyone, but it works for me. The scale and aesthetic is right for our small kitchen and 100-year-old house. If I upgrade, it will probably be to an HG One rather than an electric grinder.

Well,

After asking about grinders in the buying advice forum, I found two locally at what seemed a good price - $45 for the pair - a BG and a Trosser, both in what seems to be good shape. The photos are from the seller - the grinders are en route.






I find it strange that BG is not so common.

John

Good finds. I bet that Trosser is exactly what you were looking for. Small-ish for portability and very capable in the clever coffee dripper range. The BG mill is probably more wobbly at coarse grind settings-or to put it positively, better at fine grind settings-but that's a great example of a mill from that manufacturer. Looks to be in like-new condition.

While the BG machines are less common, they are out there. I'm also pretty sure the same company made mills under different labels. For example, I restored this Made in Italy mill a couple years ago.



While I've never seen the "Frap" brand again, I've seen other Made in Italy mills with strong similarities. In fact, I suspect that if we compared notes on construction details, we'd come to the conclusion that BG probably made the Frap mill.



BTW: If either grinder smells funky inside, you can pop it apart, soak the burrs for several hours and put everything back together with some strategic lubrication. Here's Doug's description of the process on the Orphan Espresso website:

http://www.orphanespresso.com/Vintage-H ... 546-1.html

While there should be no need to refinsh your mills, it is nice to give them a good cleaning. Afterwards, they'll work better, feel better and the coffee will taste better. Just pay attention to how they came apart (take pictures).

David,

Both are in great shape - I got them last night.

It looks like the Trosser will be easy to take apart - the pins or screws holding the metal cap have been removed. There are nice big screws underneath that presumably will allow the guts to be pulled out and fully disassembled. The box is made of solid mahogany.


It seems that the BG would be more of a project - the bolts holding the top strap on come up from the bottom. The top plate is screwed to the top of the box from below and there is no way I can see to get at the screws in the bottom of the box top short of separating wooden panels. It may became simply a objet d'art. The arm is marked exactly like yours.

The top of the Italy mill I worked on was nailed on w/ brads. (Peugeot mills are the same way.) If you ever want or need to, the easy way to open one of these up for servicing is to open the box from the bottom. Then you can access everything you need to on the inside without messing with the top.

The bottom plate is also nailed on w/ brads. If it is a little loose already-many are-you can just pull the bottom plate straight off. If it's tight, you can encourage it to open up. For example, reach in with something and tap the bottom to open a seam, then use something rigid and flat to spread that open.

Couple tips:

If you want to reuse the same nails, put a drop or two of water in each nail hole to swell the wood slightly, improving the purchase.

If you do need to remove the top, get some wood putty to match the finish so that you can recess the nails and cover the nail holes when you reassemble everything.

The top of my BG can only be removed from the underside - so I have to get into the box to remove it. The bottom of my BG is held in place with screws, two of which appeared to be peened over. Turns out they were just gunky. My patient girlfriend cleaned out the gunk and I was able to extract them. I am waiting on some Joe Glo, then I will continue the teardown and cleaning process.

John

Nice! That's a high end construction detail. It eliminates any exposed fasteners in the top or sides.

I've only seen that on a few KyM mills before. The KyM detail looks like this:



Basically, there's a saw kerf inside the box that a metal plate slides into; that plate is screwed down when it's in place. Let us know how BG does it.

Starting taking apart my KyM grinder yesterday. Left the burrs overnight soaking in Cafiza. The burr assembly looks like the picture above. Looking forward to trying out this grinder. There is a bit of play at the top causing a bit of a whobble when grinding. Is this a problem? Going to try to tighten things up.

Is the whole hopper dome moving? If so, I eliminate this by taking the hopper off and gluing hardwood plugs into the nail holes for the brads that hold the hopper to the top plate. You can use toothpicks for the plugs or whittle down a chopstick. After the glue dries, you can cut the plug flush with the top plate. When you reassemble everything, the tiny brads will hold the hopper much tighter that they did before. Reassembly is easiest if you can drill a tiny pilot hole for each brad.

There are other types of slop that are not as easy to eliminate. For example, I have one KyM that inherently has a lot of slop in each rotation based on the fact that the diameter of the burr axle is significantly smaller than the opening in the upper bearing. A fitted bearing like this would eliminate that slop:

Hand (grinder) Jive - a photo essay

Since I have other mills that work well as is, I haven't bothered to take that modification project on.

Another problem that isn't easily fixed is if the wobble is related to different parts of the hopper moving in relation to one another. I have a gorgeous Dienes mill that has this problem. It grinds okay, and will even work for espresso, but the wobble bugs me so much that I never use it.