chile grinding contraption

salsalady

salsalady

eXtreme Business
Red Savina Powder! (and more to come)

We purchased a reconditioned Cuisinart coffee grinder with an extra large bowl, all stainless,,,,high hopes, low performance.

This is some of the ground powder that's been sifted to show the large pieces and seeds the coffee grinder did not grind up.

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I'll take pics later and edit in but for now, here's the gear I put together for grinding a kilo of dried chiles in 30 minutes!


Over 10 years ago, my mom gave me this grain grinder, right before we moved from civilization to the unknown frontiers of eastern Washington.

Here it is with the hand-crank handle on the fly wheel (this is an after-shot so the belt is still on the flywheel :lol: )
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Hand grinding?!?!??? I don't think so! Time to bring in my old friend....The Big Banana!!!
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Basic equipment for us on the electrical jobsite, now time to bring in another old friend from the electrical tool box...MAXIS!
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The red pieces are part of an assembly we use for pulling in wire through conduit. THe DeWalt drill is attached to the spindle on the side and through the gear ratios, it turns the large spindle on the front, which we would have a rope wrapped around to pull the wire.



continued~
 
The bottom of the gear is supported by the cardboard box to give it stability, but it's leaning forward and the weight of the gear and the drill is what's keeping tension on the fan belt. I kept my foot on the bottom plate while the drill was running to keep the fan belt from rubbing on the C-clamps.

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The grain grinder has a pretty small chute opening to the auger, so I used the wooden handle of a wire whip to break up the large peices of dried chiles and keep them moving into the auger. Tried to crush them a little with my hands also before adding to the hopper, which seemed to help.

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I put a plastic bag around the whole grinding opening to try and keep the dust in the bag an not too much in the air. With a little electrical tape, it worked really well! All the ground chiles in the bag and not a lot of dust.

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A little out of sequence, but a quick shot while grinding of the pods, I had 1 full gallon ziploc bag plus the plastic bag in the picture of Red Savinas to grind.
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MUCH better grind than the coffee grinder, don't cha think?!
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1 kilo of Red Gold! (that's ~2.23 pounds)
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I know this ain't a typical set up. It's what I had to work with to do a quantity of powder.

For the bargain price of about $3,500, I could set you up with the same equipment........


Or you could buy 175 coffee grinders from a big box store. :lol:


PS- unless you already have a BigBanana and a Maxis....GO WITH OPTION #2! As you can see from other posts on grinding peppers, the right coffee grinders or blenders do GREAT! We just happened to get a design that did not do well on dried chiles, hence, the contraption.
 
Yes a mill does work better then a coffee grinder. Though I would wonder about heat issues with running that dewalt for long sessions.
 
DaQ- that DeWalt is one of 2 "banana's" we have for the electrical work (both about 10 years old) and they've both been sent in and been refurbished. They are true workhorses and to have survived this long being used by employees on construction jobsites....

If it gives up the ghost while grinding chiles, I hope it happens while grinding BHUTS! :rofl:

I did also think of that and checked it often, did not feel any heat build up.

This was the longest grind I have to do. Everything else is little bits, short time on.



SS- I'll check the brand and post more info tomorrow, time to wine~ ;)
 
OMG!! :eek: That looks like so much fun.

Salsalady you have to take responsibility for the seed you have just sowed in my brain!! :think: hmmmm
 
Gotta luv a women who is good on the tools.;)

Though I have to admit that my preference for power tools lies with Milwaukee and my wire puller of choice has to go with Greenlee.

But you seem to be doing okay with what you have going on there.

And my Cuisinart coffee grinder has made some good small batches of chile powder for me, but I have to admit that some of the dried pods had to be broken up by grinding them between my fingers and then reground again with the grinder, before they were fine enough to be considered good powder.

But hey, kudos to you for showing your mechanical aptitude and moxy to really put some power into your pepper grinding project and get the job done in first class style!

My hat is off to ya!

dvg
 
megamoo said:
OMG!! :eek: That looks like so much fun.

Salsalady you have to take responsibility for the seed you have just sowed in my brain!! :think: hmmmm
Click to expand...

thanks, megamoo, it worked great and made my life a whole lot easier. I'd be honored if it inspires an even better creation!



What can I say...if there's a better mousetrap....Post Pics!
 
There is always a better and greater mousetrap just waiting to be invented, but you no doubt set the bar very high with your newest incarnation of said trap!;)

dvg
 
Thanks, dvg-

EDIT- double thanks dvg, to the previous post which posted while I was typing this post..end edit-

(back to original post :crazy: just trying to keep up with technology;confused: )

My favorite tool for tree pruning is a SawzAll. Works WONDERFUL! ;)

We have Milwaukee tools in the line up also. Great tools! And when we looked at tuggers, ya gotta crunch the numbers and Greenlee's are the Cadillacs....but budget was a Chevy.....aw well, it paid for itself on the first job and hasn't missed a beat since.

And now it's "re-purposed"! Actually not re-purposed as it's original dutied are still required, but in this time of economic restraint, it is being re-utilized! :)
 
I was being honest when i said i was impressed with the mechanical ingenuity you showed there.

Hell, most men, though they would be reluctant to admit it, wouldn't have been able to pull that off.

That is a hot pepper grinding contraption that an inventing duo such as the likes of Rube Goldberg and Nichola Tesla would have been proud to have built.;)

dvg
 
dvg said:
Rube Goldberg and Nichola Tesla
dvg
Click to expand...

Goldberg and Tesla....aahhh...if they were here today, they would have that thing running on sunlight at midnight without a belt!



dvg, sincerely thanks, SL
 
An industrial burr grinder gives a fantastically fine powder, takes up less space, and a tad bit safer. I'm impressed by the creative ingenuity, but it's a bit scary (in a saftey-based kind of view).
 
DEFCON Creator said:
An industrial burr grinder gives a fantastically fine powder, takes up less space, and a tad bit safer. I'm impressed by the creative ingenuity, but it's a bit scary (in a saftey-based kind of view).
Click to expand...

Thanks, Creator,
Ah, a burr grinder! It's on my wish list, for sure.

I'm comfortable with the drill and tugger as I use them for work all the time. It probably looks a tad unsafe, but in actuality, if something had gotten caught under the belt, the belt is only being held on by the weight of the drill and the tugger housing. I can easily lift both, so nothing would have gotten injured.

Who knew making hot stuff could be so hazardous? Contraptions, hot steam in a blender, capsaisin in the eye (or elsewhere! :eek: )...YIKES!
:lol:
 
I'm a huge fan of making due with what you got. Very impressive SL. Using the tiny coffee grinder would take forever and would have been quite a tedious job. What are your plans for all that flaming dust?
 
DEFCON Creator said:
Before I installed a reverse pressure hood, making Zero was like working in a factory with traces of chlorine gas vented in.
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That sounds REALLY harsh! I have to wear a mask when working with the powders, but the rest of the time, it doesn't bother me any more. Hubby or the kid come out to visit the kitchen and they leave in a matter of minutes. (light weights! :lol: )


Thanks, CA, The Red Savina is strictly for the hot sauces that list Red Savina as one of the ingredients. The orange habs are for the fresh salsa, that label only says "hot chiles" and is not specific to the variety.

The rest of the powders are just to play around with, keep the dog out of the garbage, torture the family...that kind of thing ;)

There's actually only about 3 cups of powders other than the habs. In the photo below, there's chile de arbol in the bag in front (or cayenne, we're not sure, it was a mystery plant), tiny bit of Peruvian white habs middle row/left, yellow blend middle row/middle (orange peter peppers, aji chinchi, a few fatalii) Red blend middle row/right (red peter peppers, 7 pod, couple bhuts)
Orange habs (for the salsa) back row/left and a bag of what I've been calling "tailings" back/right.

During this summer, any time we'd try a chile and not eat the whole thing or scrape the seeds out of a pod, we'd dry the bits and pieces and add it to the tailings pile. It wasn't quite dry and did not grind up all the way, so I'll re-grind it after the last batch of habs gets done.


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and just because they looked so pretty in the bright sunshine-
peruvian habs, yellow blend, red blend and Chile de Arbol.
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