Beautiful little pepper grinder. Never going to break an expensive plastic one again. Metal - the material of your grandparents! Great as is, but for a courser grind it's pretty easy to modify to your liking.
"Modify a $50 pepper mill" you say? Sure, why not, it's metal. Here's how:
Get a punch (like a screwdriver or nail set) hammer, pliers, vice grips or best of all a bench vise, and a file.
Unscrew the two philips screws on the side of the mill's body. Drop out the grinding mechanism and the shaft (undo the bolt and remove the handle first).
Undo the adjusting screw at the bottom (don't lsoe the spring!) and use the screwdriver/punch and hammer to knock free the adjusting screw's cross bar. I did this on a work glove so as not to mar the grinder or my work bench and so it wouldn't slip away so easily.
Once this is knocked free clamp that cross bar in a vise or pliers or whatever and file a section of that cross bar down a millimeter or two. You want to file the wider part of the bar, the side that faces up to the sky when you put it back together. Make sure you don't file the ends that seat the bar in the mechanism, you only want to file an area slightly larger than the diameter of the grinding burr (about 20 or 21 milimeters, or ~10mm from the center of the adjusting screw's hole).
Once this is done, but it back together! The cross bar may fit loose when you tap it back in, but it's got nowhere to go once you put the mechanism back in the grinder body. If the very minor rattling bothers you, just put a dab of glue on it to keep it in place. The top cap rattle more anyway
Now that adjusting screw will actually have a purpose!
This process gives a coarser grind, and also lowers the handle towards the top cap so the top cap won't bounce around quite so much as another reviewer mentioned.
If you're a really ballsy pepper grinder modifying gal/guy you can even eliminate the gap between the handle and the top cap by unscrewing the grinding shaft (adjustable wrench on the handle flats) from the burr (wrap the burr with that leather glove and grip it with vice grips/vice/big pliers) and filing down the bottom of the shaft a couple of millimeters. If you go too far the handle will bottom out on the top cap and you'll be stuck with fine grind instead of the courser grind you've already worked so hard for. If this happens, just unscrew the shaft again and stick a pepper corn, or half a pepper corn, or a tiny rock or something small and hard in the bottom and tighten it back up again.
Voila! The perfect pepper mill! "Too much work," you say? Yeah, probably, but what else are you gonna do at your grandparents' house for a week with all those tools lying around? Either way, how can you go wrong with a pepper grinder that you can modify to your own tolerances. It's that solid.
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This Item  Pepper Mill Imports Atlas Pepper Mill, Copper, 9" |  |  |  |  |  | |
| Price | — | $115.00 | $135.00 | $105.00 | -19% $109.00 List: $135.00 | $79.99 |
| Delivery | — | Get it as soon as Monday, May 13 | Get it as soon as Monday, May 13 | Get it as soon as Monday, May 13 | Get it May 13 - 15 | Get it as soon as Wednesday, May 15 |
| Customer Ratings | ||||||
| Style | ||||||
| Giftable | ||||||
| Easy to use | ||||||
| Value for money | ||||||
| Sold By | — | Alexander Home LLC | Alexander Home LLC | Alexander Home LLC | Alexander Home LLC | All Splendid |
| material | Copper, brass and steel | Copper, Brass | Copper, Brass | Copper, Brass | Brass | Stainless Steel, Porcelain, Ceramic |
| operation mode | Manual | Manual | Manual | Manual | Manual | Manual |
| dishwasher safe | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
Reviews with images
Lifetime mills
Sweet series of mills! Love the build quality and the heft. They seem to perform excellent after some trial milling. They really look awesome on the countertop next to the stove. I had to research on a set and I was down to a Peugeot and these as I wanted something I could pass along to relatives. I believe these are a fantastic choice. They weigh about a pound for the salt mill and 1.5lbs for the all metal pepper mill. Yes, $140 is a lot for spice mills, but you’ll probably never have to purchase again...
