Talk:Gristmill

Do not merge

Grist mill should not be milled with flour mill. It served an entirely different social, political, and business purpose. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.254.163.236 (talk) 23:53, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Agreed - the articles should not be merged. Pollinator 00:14, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Comment

Despite the above comments, corn mill, flour mill and grist mill appear to have been merged. I consider this good, as they were liable to develop as parallel articles on the same subject. If there is a significant difference, it would be better if it were explained in the course of the article. However, I am not happy about the value of the list of working grist mills (both in USA). There is a separate article Watermills in the United Kingdom, which probably includes both working mills and decayed ones, as well as some concerned with other industries. How do we ensure that there is reasonable coverage? It is particularly important to avaoid parallel articles, as this tends to generate conflicting material. There is a risk that water mill will similarly develop as a rival. Peterkingiron 17:01, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

To equate gristmill with watermill is entirely erroneous. Watermills were used for a large variety of tasks other than grinding grains - see the list of watermill types which points to a number of separate articles. There's a fair bit of linguistic diversity here - the British term is usually 'corn mill' and 'grist mill' isn't used although they mean much the same. I'm ok with the current arrangement. Chris55 13:18, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

There seems to be a problem with this article: when I try to make a link to "flour mill", I arrive here. But the article contains little to explain the history (more than 2000 years) and operation of these mills. Furthermore, it contains rather a long list of mills, all of which are in the USA. Naturally, one would add a "globalize" tag to the article, but is it really intended that the article should contain a list of all the world's working flour mills? On the other hand, the "water mill" article contains a wealth of material that is lacking here, but does not confine itself to flour milling. Anyway, I am adding a bit to put the historical section into perspective. . . .LinguisticDemographer 20:12, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

I suspect that some of the detail in the article Watermill ought to be shifted here, as it contains a good deal of detail that is in fact specific to flour milling. On the other hand, the list of mills in USA should be removed into a separate article, equivalent to Watermills in the United Kingdom. Similar lists are no doubt needed for other countries. Peterkingiron 17:35, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Missing dates

The sections "The classical British and American mills" and "Modern mills" lack dates, and appear to be out of chronological order? -- Beland (talk) 00:25, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Order changed as requested, but I wonder whether there are consequential changes needed. Peterkingiron (talk) 21:36, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Barbegal aqueduct and mill

in that page it's indicated "4.5 tons of flour per day" where in this article it's "2.4 to 3.2 tonnes per hour". 216.86.113.233 (talk) 03:21, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

These will both be modern estimates. I suspect that the Barbegal article will be better based on the most recent academic literature on the site, whereas this one will be based on a general reference book, by Gimpel: an important work but not a recetn one. Gimpel (p.9) does indeed give the figure 2-4-3.2 tonnes per hour, but his book was originally written in 1976 and I suspect he was quoting from much earlier work. The source cited in the Babegal article is a French website, which I cannot manage to open. However, I think that there is a more recent article on the subject, which may be the basis for the lower figure of 4.5 tonnnes per day. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:08, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Why do corn mill and flour mill redirect here?

A large proportion of flour produced in Britain before the industrial revolution came from Windmills - in fact there were some 10,000 of them by the 19th century. However, the only mention that windmills get is in one sentence that reads "Classical mill designs are usually water powered, though some are windmills, or powered by livestock". Well I'm sorry but that's just plain wrong. Either there needs to be a longer section on windmills with a link that says "see main article Windmill" or else "corn mill" and "flour mill" should go to a disambiguation page. Any suggestions on the best way to do it?

Also this article has a rather odd arrangement with a gallery of pictures half way down and then long lists of mills underneath. I propose (as has been suggested before) that the lists of mills in different countries should be moved into their own articles along the lines of List of watermills in the United Kingdom. Richerman (talk) 02:07, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

A grist mill is a grinding mill - normally grinding grain to flour. The object of having redirects is so that we do not have two articles on precisely the same subject. I see no objection to the addition of a windmill section, and possibly an animal mill one. Would you like to write these? Windmills were certainly important, but not necessarily as important as you imply. I agree that the structure is odd, and would suggest that the US mills should now be moved to a separate list article. The others can probably stay for the moment. The gallery would be better at the bottom. I would suggest that you make these changes if you can find the time. Peterkingiron (talk) 18:07, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Ah, on reflection I think I may have got confused. In the recent BBC Victorian Farm Christmas programme they had some corn ground in a windmill and said there were 10,000 such mills in England in the 19th century. I assumed they meant windmills but perhaps they were talking about about all corn mills. Anyway I'll have a go at restructuring the article and adding a section on windmills as I get time. Richerman (talk) 00:23, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, I've now found there is a List of watermills which seems to be the place where these should be listed. How about if I move them all into there if they're not already listed? I don't see any point in duplicating lists, especially as there are more in this list than there are in the general list of watermills. Richerman (talk) 00:58, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I had not found that, but I still think that the US list here and in that article need to be merged into a single new article List of watermills in United States. The rest of the list here needs to be merged into List of watermills. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:03, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Mill Types (process/method)

I'm looking for information on types of grain mill, and oddly having trouble finding it. Oh, you have water, wind, etc, but that only discusses where the motive power comes from. I'm specifically interested in *how* that power gets used. My digging thus far has unearthed: 'Stone', 'Plate', 'Hammer', and 'Roller' mill types, but lacks a description of them. While I might be able to guess how the hammer and roller mills work, this leaves me guessing for the other two types, and I've reason to suspect the list I've uncovered is by no means complete. Could anyone elaborate on the mill types? Yamagawa (talk) 03:01, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm no expert on mills but I found this with a google search. Have you looked at the external links in the article? - there are some useful descriptions in there. "Stone" refers to the type of mills decscribed in the article that use millstones. Are plate and hammer actually gristmills? They sound more like the type used for steel working (see rolling mill) Richerman (talk) 10:44, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Corn milling technology changed in the late 19th century, and milling using mill stones was replaced by the use of Roller mills (not rolling mills, which are for producing bars or sheets (or other shapes) of metal). There is an article hammer mill. These 19th century (and later) types are certainly flour mills; whether they are "grist mills" is possibly an issue of semantics. Nevetheless, all of these are quite different from the traditional water-powered corn mills, and I would be reluctant to see articles on them being changed, other than the highest level articles dealing with the subject of flour production generally. Peterkingiron (talk) 23:55, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Yamagawa, stone mills grind grain between two stones, plate mills substitute abrasive steel plates for the stones, roller mills crush grain by forcing it between cylindrical rollers, and hammer mills crush grain by striking it repeatedly. In the context of small single-user grain mills, hammer and plate milling are not uncommon, although the hammers are probably better described as flails. In industrial hammer milling, camshafts are used to lift and drop heavy hammers, typically for foundry or textile work, not flour production. However, a hammer mill is a tool, that can be used for whatever purpose the tool user desires, and a typical hammer mill would certainly work for crushing grain if the miller was willing to figure out some way to feed it. Roller mills have large (typically steel) horizontal rollers set one atop another, and grain is fed from one side and emerges as "rolled grain" (think oatmeal) on from the other side. Sufficiently heavy textured rollers used on sufficiently dry grains will produce a powdery flour, although this may take several trips through the rollers. The crushed flour produced by rolling is visibly different from stone-ground flour. Most modern flour is rolled, and stone-ground flour commands a premium price, because proper stones are expensive to obtain and maintain while steel rollers are quite cheap and last longer than grinding plates. HTH, Charlie. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.153.180.229 (talk) 18:31, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Images

I think the text of this article looks much better now but I'm not too happy with the images. I didn't think a black and white photograph from 1938 was the best for the top of the article so I've moved it to the gallery and replaced it with the best one to show the workings of a mill - albeit a very old one! Having said that, the gallery doesn't really add anything useful to the article, other than being a repository for eveybody's pictures of their local mill, or one they've visited. The picture of Stretton Mill, which I think I may of added myself, is gorgeous but on reflection, is decorative rather than informative as the mill is just a tiny part of the picture. How about if we remove the gallery and just have a link that says there is media in commons relating to the mills? That then leaves the question of what should go in to illustrate the article - any suggestions? One omission is that there is nothing to illustrate the Modern mills section. I suspect that all modern mills may be just part of a rather unremarkable industrial estate. I think there is one not too far from where I live so, if I'm right, I'll take a photo to show that mills are not all charming olde worlde stone buildings with water wheels or sails. Richerman (talk) 11:35, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

It might be better to prune the list (rather than delete it), placing some of the US mills removed in List of watermills in United States. We seem to have an excessive number of them. I think the US list was formerly part opf this article. Peterkingiron (talk) 18:07, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Please examine the image in this article and at URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flour_mill_20050723_001.jpg . I'm quite certain it needs to be rotated to the left 90 degrees. Billbobagns@gmail.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.130.210.234 (talk) 03:37, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Don't know what happened to that image, it didn't used to be like that, but I've fixed it. I've had to force the image size as it was being displayed stretched out horizontally, at least it was on my pc. Perhaps someone can fix it properly. Thanks for the heads up. Richerman (talk) 21:16, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Question

"can be made to produce nutritionally and functionally equivalent output"

What?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 8.225.200.133 (talk) 20:21, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Where are the modern flour mills covered?

Beside the fact that the history described in this article is rather poor, the chapter on modern industrial flour mills with latest technology and hundreds of tons output per hour are completely missing. This kind of article leaves the impression that milling is an old-fashioned process without any importance by today. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Marco.m.zappa (talk • contribs) 20:42, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

As one might expect modern flour mills are covered under the (admittedly rather brief) section entitled "Modern Mills". However, the good news is that Wikipedia is billed as "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit", so rather than criticising the contributions already made by others perhaps it would be more constructive to contribute some referenced information yourself. Richerman (talk) 23:46, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Are other kinds of mill operators also called millers?

As for merging Miller: I am not a mill expert but I know a sawmill operator is called a sawyer. My question about merging Miller with Grist mill is how many other mill operators are called miller? Why merge Miller just with Gristmill?

I added some links to Mill. I think there should be better linking between the many articles relating to mills and milling, an overview of sorts. As a new editor I am still trying to learn what size article is the goal. Many articles I am interested in are stubs and can be presented as part of one larger article which gives the reader a broader view of the subject.Jim Derby (talk) 13:51, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Merge Miller to Gristmill 2012

Yutsi proposed in July 2012 that Miller be merged here as a part of the Gristmill article.

• Jim Derby seems to support the merger. (see above)
  SBaker43 (talk) 19:34, 27 May 2013 (UTC) My name was added in support by another person which was reasonable. I am neutral on the merger. An aspect of naming articles is having interlanguage links which match up and Miller has thirteen interlanguage links so this is a good reason to keep the article. The German article is longer than the English article so maybe the English article still has room to grow. Jim Derby (talk) 12:42, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose, while the two articles are clearly related, Miller is an occupation while Gristmill is about the facility, mechanism, equipment and process. Teacher and School seem to be a parallel situation.
  My experience has been that when two main topics have been merged, one of them tends to be subordinated and mostly disappear over time. REDIRECTs sometimes reveal this by pointing to an article that has a few scattered sentences about the redirected subject. I believe both topics need to remain independent with suitable links between them.
  This merge section was initiated, Including my perception of Jim Derby's position, to help resolve Yutsi's proposal in a reasonable time period.
  SBaker43 (talk) 19:34, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

• oppose occupation vs. plant. This is no reason to merge, each topic can support an article independently. Andy Dingley (talk) 20:32, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose: I oppose the merge for reasons already stated. - The Aviv (talk) 14:49, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

More than a year has passed since the merge suggestion was made, and the consensus seems to be to keep the Miller article separate. Therefore, I will go ahead and remove the merge tags. - The Aviv (talk) 14:49, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

External links modified

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External links modified

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Hardly anything on history, old technology. Far too US-centered.

Compare with French and German specialised pages (flour mill, French, handmill, German, millstone, German). A significant part of archaeology and the history of technology focus on grain grinding devices, and English Wiki has nothing on that. Anyone willing? Arminden (talk) 11:35, 12 April 2021 (UTC)