Looking at this old shredder?

[Paraord]

ChinaVoodoo I think you hit the nail on the head there.

 

[Paraord]

A few more pictures I got overnight for those curious. Its a pretty beefy machine no doubt.







Looks like that it has an adjustment on the one blade set. 1/4" appears to be max so at half value the min would be 1/8" if it adjusts the way I think it does. Still pretty cool old piece of equipment isnt it?

 

[deluxestogie]

The design certainly cannot mill grain. Burr mills were the standard then as now. The cylinders have no way (no teeth or co-axial ridges) to force grain through, even to just crack corn, for example. Although the metal stand looks just like those old feed mills, the business end just doesn't make sense to me. I'm still inclined toward a cutter of some sheet material. (Example: In the 19th century, every single pipe of every pipe organ in Europe and North America was fitted with leather or cork valves and gaskets of some sort. Some were disks, but some were circumferential strips.)

Bob

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

I understand that there is usually a great deal of texture to the surface of a mill roller, and you're probably right, but I don't think the suggestion it is a mill can be completely ruled out. I have one for barley which I bought, which is like you say, textured, but before that, I and a guy from work built one with smooth rollers we acquired from a scrap bin, and after just a minute amount of roughing the surface, it had all the grip it needed. It doesn't take as much surface texture as new mills currently have, just a few minutes with a wire wheel, something you wouldn't be able to tell through all that rust.

 

[Hasse SWE]

I most say that it looks like a "grain cross/crushing cereals"(sorry but I don't know the English name). But if it is what I think the idea with it is that dry Grains such as wheat and oats pass the rollers while moist remains.I think I take some of the pictures and send to my uncle and ask if he has the one we had on the farm I grew up on.I am pretty sure that he can tell me much more about it and exactly how it works and have been used.