Marga Mill setting

[modo]

I have just bought a Marga Mill and was told to set the rollers at 0.9 mm apart is this right.

[warra48]

The prevailing wisdom is to set your gap to a level where you get a stuck sparge, and then back it off.
Having said that, I thinkl .9 mm is OK as a gap, but a bit on the tight side for me.
I have a Mill Master, and crush my wheat at 1 mm, and the rest of the grist at 1.2 mm, but I do handgrind. I think the results may be different if I were to use a drill/motor to power my mill.
I manage to achieve over 90% into the kettle normally, so don't see a need for me to tighten it up.
I believe DrSmurto and Trough Lolly use a Marga mill, and they may be able to add more usefull information than I can.

[modo]

Once again thanks for your wisdom Warra.

[Biernut]

If you set the knob on (1) that will give you a setting of 1.016 which gives me 80%+ into the boiler. If you are using the hopper supplied you may need to use a rats tail file to lengthen the slot by around 10mm and make it a tad wider with a flat file, as I experienced the grain log jamming with the original. For a small mill does a great job although definitely need motorizing as hand grinding is a bit of a pain. Setting up a hopper as per Ross's site is the go.

Cheers

[modo]

Thanks Biernut I bought it from Ross and have already set it up with the down pipe and catcher. I bought it a month ago and haven't used it yet and I forgot what they told me and thought it was 0.9mm. And I will modify the hopper like you say.

[Biernut]

You can adjust the rollers out to just over 2mm but you would need to drill a hole in the back of the ajustment knob to lock on to the locating spiggot. The jury is still out, on how to get the metal cap off the the knob which appears to be pressed on or hammered on so the knob can be removed to drill such hole. The screw on the other side is on an eccentric which as far as I can make out is to parallel the rollers up.

[James L]

to get the cap off, you just need to give one side a bit of a hit with a screwdriver and hammer, and it'll pop straight off... if you do it carefully, you'll barely notice where you hit it.

I think adjusting the marga is a little more than just adjusting the two top rollers, i found that i needed to bring the third roller a little closer to the top two to give a finer crush than what the first two gave. This is done simply by getting a spanner on that hex nut on the sides of the mill, you'll need to do both sides so the roller sits parallel with the other rollers.

By doing this, you can crack the grains using the first two rollers, and the second finer roll gap crushes the grain into smaller pieces without tearing the husks up, so what you are left with is really fine pieces of grain, but husks that are still relatively intact.

As for the hopper, I made one using the diagram on one of the threads.. Also, i took the base off the mill, and screwed the mill onto a piece of wood with a large hole cut out for hte grain to go through, so i dont have to continually emtpy the small container. I usually put the piece of wood with the mill straight onto a bucket and start crushing... all i ahve to do now is try to modify a drill to make the crush process a little less monotonous...

[Biernut]

James I am not sure whether you and I have the same Marga Mill but looking at the mill from the handle side on mine, only the top right hand roller is adjustable as it is mounted on an eccentric bush. If you open the top rollers up you close the bottom one and visa versa as you adjust away from one and closer to the other. With the opening on the top at maximum 1.06mm the opening at the bottom is over 2mm and not doing much crushing at all. The rollers are set in a delta fashion with two rollers at the top and the bottom one driven by the handle. This is a fixed spindle and has no adjustment. If I modified the adjustment knob by drilling locating holes in the back then I could widen the gap at the top and at the same time reduce the gap at the bottom, quite frankly I don't see any advantage as the crush I am getting from the two top rollers and husks intact seem to be fine.
As for the cap on the knob sorry to report it has defied tapping and trying to get something down the side of it without wrecking it and is still stuck fast. I am contemplating drilling a hole each side and using a set of pullers to remove it.