Daily Archives: Thursday, November 11, 2004

Whisper Mill Dead

Posted on by
12

My Whisper Mill just died this morning.

I was grinding Spelt [to make the bread I needed to make today], the WM clogged up the shoot, and instantly shut off itself, fuse throw. Fine, that happens sometimes with spelt. No biggie. It happens so fast.

I cleaned the flour shoots all out, dumped out the grain left in the “hopper”, re-set the fuse switched, turned it on, voila, it worked only to within a few seconds start sending up black whisps of smoke and flipped off again.

Or course this all happened in a split second time frame, hardly any time between things happening. No time to react any faster than the machine itself died as doing.

I am totally deflated over this.

At least I have enough flour for a couple loaves of bread … but I can only hope my lifetime warranty will cover what happened.

I think, hope, hope, hope, it’s just the fuse.

But it means sending it away to Utah to be inspected/fixed.

This has reinforced the idea that I love my WhisperMill, but would love to have a CountryLiving motorized mill too.

My old standby is a Kitchen Aide Grain Mill attachment. I am too spoiled to ruin my Kitchen Aide by grinding rough flour out of grain to make a measly small loaf in 100 times the time it takes to get enough fine flour to make 6 loaves or more with the WhisperMill. Grrr.

I figured this day would come sometime. Just wasn’t hoping it would be so soon.

Some people don’t seem to have trouble with their WM’s … well the old models seemed to have worked better, so I’ve heard. I didn’t get into the market for a mill until WM had changed manufacturing to Korea. I then waited until the supposed bugs were worked out of their new facility manufacturing of WM’s. So I’ve had it for … over 3 years, I think. Years are running together for me, and I can’t distinguish time periods of some things :veryshocked:

It figures this happened today too, feeling so dull myself, full of words that I write and delete, rain, overcast weather, blahs.

Rain Rain Rain

Posted on by
Reply

It’s in the low 40′s and raining, with more rain coming this way for awhile, possible thunderstorms later today. Thunderstorms would be nice, actually. We’ve had very few of them in 2004. [I love watching and listening to thunder and lightening!]

So it’s dark today, overcast, constant drizzle since the rain started right after the sun was coming up. I saw the horizon, a break in the clouds near it, and the lower horizon clouds bright orange. Rain.

As my father used to say: “Red sky in the morning is the sailors warning, red sky at night is the sailors delight.”

The sun was still below the horizon, close to the time it would rise over the edge. The air felt moist. I knew rain was forecasted, and so wasn’t surprise to feel the moist air and see the overcast clouds. I was grateful for the peak at the horizon though, a nice orange glow to remember on this dark, dismal day. Not too much later the I saw the deck was slick with water.

The temperatures are supposed to get into the mid to high 50′s today. With no sun that will make a chill to start creeping throughout the house.

UPDATE: [2:27PM]:

It’s cold out and getting colder inside. It’s raining still, and the accuweather site says it’s 45 degrees F. but that it FEELS like 36 degrees F. It’s not bad inside, just means that the main floor is most uncomfortable, that’s the kitchen and dining area. My toes get numby being there for long, since that’s the crawl space under neath the floor. We need to get a few things for the fireplace before we can start using it this season. We haven’t stocked up on wood yet either, but have some left over from last year. I’d rather not dig into it until I know we can replenish it.

As the fireplace goes, I’ve been working it the whole time we’ve lived here with barbeque tools. Not the best thing, but I’ve adapted fine since I’ve never used “real” fireplace tools. But I know we should have real ones, and mostly sure that we will get them this year. Also the thing inside that the logs sit on needs replaced, it’s ratty and nearly about to fall apart, twisted metal and all … just not the right thing to make a fire ontopof. The built in screen needs removed and we need to get something to replace it. I want just a nice firescreen with some panels and doors in the middle, to place in front of the firebox. I’m sick of the “curtain” type fire screen, it’s mangled and horrid to work with (little links that are … ) . So those are two things we really do need, as well as the tools then. An ash bucket would be nice, and a log holder/carrier thingy too.

Ah it never ends, the things one needs to do, wants to do, has to do, should do … We have builtins to make around the fireplace and a new mantle to create. But the accessories win first place in staggered need. It’s worth it if I can build warming fires that don’t make my hands so tough from being TOO close to the flame. :smile: