Hi!

I'm new on this forum, and only registered because of this thread.
This is my first 'old' grinder, restored by myself:





I have no idea of the age and exact model, any thoughts on it?

ahoka wrote:Hi!

I'm new on this forum, and only registered because of this thread.
This is my first 'old' grinder, restored by myself:

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I have no idea of the age and exact model, any thoughts on it?

Looks beautiful. Do you have any "before" shots of it? Sorry, I don't have any info on it, just wanted to say it looks great!

This one is from the auction site:



It was in good shape, I only had to clean the metal parts and redo the wood finishing.
I have used a water based lacquer, which was very pleasant to work with.

I have still no idea how could I repaint the knobs as I don't know how to remove them (if it is possible at all in a gentle way).

It looks very nice, thanks for sharing. The drawer knobs are usually glued in - might come out with some gentle turning, but don't break it. The crank knobs are not usually removable unless you can replace the metal rivet that holds it on.

I guess that model KYM is from the late 1950s or 1960s. Have you tried it for grinding yet?

PC

Yes, of course! It grinds powder fine.

yes KyMs Mokka rock!
very nice, I have exact same model (I think of the two of which one is a tad wider, that is the narrower one; I have both) but the stamps on the bottom are unfortunately unreadable on mine.

ahoka wrote:Yes, of course! It grinds powder fine.

Welcome to H-B ahoka - that mill has similar curved sides to the white KyM in the photos I put up a couple posts back - yours has very nice natural wood and looks great polished up like that.

The mill I am posting about today has been discussed before but it has been a while. This is the first time I pulled it off the shelf to clean and grease the inner workings too. If it were any other mill photos would be redundant - remove the drawer, turn the lever clockwise to loosen up the grind, counterclockwise to tighten the grind (for espresso!), and call it a day. That bulletproof adjustment system is wonderfully simple - so simple it became over time the defacto method for adjusting the grind on these mills.

This mill comes from a time when alternative designs were being marketed in hopes that their innovation would leap frog them over their competition and become the new gold standard of the day for hand mills. One such company was the Peter Dienes company. The Mill was the 550 Mokka and the innovation was the external adjustment knob located on the rear side panel.

It looks good on paper but after spending a bit of time cleaning and adjusting I can make some educated guesses as to why this design disappeared from the product line. First, the mill is difficult to take apart and put back together so user serviceability is not near as friendly as grind size adjustment. Next, the mill has a lot of extra parts compared to similar knee mills which decrease durability and drive up cost. Last, the adjustment range is limited with this design - it will grind Turkish fine, has no trouble with espresso or moka pot, but will not grind very coarse.

The mill shape and natural wood looks great, and the burr quality is excellent for this ball bearing supported mokka mill so depending on your prep style one like this could be a great fit, but it is not a "do it all" type of mill that some more modern (everything is relative with these old mills) Dienes products are capable of offering. These command a premium when the infrequent auction offering one of these shows up and I am happy to have mine, but before I would pay the current price I would want to be sure it fits my needs.

Information is power, words are information, and pictures are worth a thousand words, so here are the money shots for our photo essay:

Torn down:



Up close harware:



The adjustment:



The adjustment up close - be careful to mount the pin with the point down and ball in cup on top



As usual, a beautifully crafted and machined Dienes burr set:



A parting shot - The Bonsai Blend from Velton's is highly recommended!

Eric,

I have one very similar, but the box is made from a rick mahogany wood. I'll post some pictures later. And I also found that my mill with the back-adjustment knob is one of my best-performers, and has become my go-to mill. It's fast and grinds incredibly fine. In fact, mine sat on my work-bench for almost a year before I did a basic clean and metal polish. I got it together right about the time I was considering a Pharos... It's performance is the reason I've not acted on OE's great looking modern mill. Maybe someday, but for now, this PeDe mill is all I need for espresso.

Maybe someday, but for now, this PeDe mill is all I need for espresso.

Been almost 10 years since I said something similar to myself, and I still don't have upgraditis. Just today, in fact, I was marveling and the "feel" of my blue PeDe as it chewed through 16g of my favorite espresso blend. The shots I've been pulling lately are so tasty that I wonder if a different grinder could really improve them. Maybe someday I'll be lucky enough to find out, but I'd probably want to do some extensive testing before I laid out a lot of money for something "better".

None of this implies that hand grinding is for everyone, of course. It takes some extra time and effort, and could be quite a chore for more than 3-4 epsressos at a time. But for 1-2 shots, it's tough to beat!

PC

We all know the shipping cost is very high in German, it cost 40 euro to ship to Taiwan for under 5kg. So it is not smart to bid a grinder in ebay.de and pay the extra 40 euro.
Brian is my associate, he used a smart way in the last time to buy bulk vintage grinders from ebay.de. He contacted with an agent lived in Berlin, who collected all the winning items for him, and mail them to Taiwan in a package.
I used his idea and bought 10 grinders this time, I am surprise to find that I am not only saving shipping cost, item ship to Deutsche only usually ends at a lower price.
The new collection: