June 17, 2021 - 7:41pm
Vintage Lee S-6 - S600 OR 700 Hopper, Flour Outlet?
I just picked up a used Lee S-6 with the seller attesting to it being in excellent condition. No hopper or flour bag, as expected. Anyone know if the current parts for the S600 (if I could find them) or S700 can be made to work with the mill? I spoke with an engineer from Lee's successor company (forget the name) who agreed, the hopper doesn't seem like any big deal - no need for a controlled feed or anything like that. I understand the S6 was a closed bag and the S700 is based on a kind of skirt over a bowl; but I've modded my (brewing) mill with a chute that simply feeds into a 5 gallon bucket.
Any issues here (I know of the explosion potential - but think that is mitigated by any number of ways)?
Share
Congrats on your purchase. The skirt for the S700 will not fit, it is too small to fit on the discharge opening, but it is very simple to replicate. I made a similar one for my Lee with an elastic band at the top. I didn't like the way it was secured to the bowl, so I used a straight sided tupperware container as the discharge hopper, made a wooden hoop that was just narrower than the bowl, and then wrapped the open end of the discharge skirt around the hoop and pressed it into the tupperware container.
If you want to use a closed bag, Harbor Freight sold a dust collector bag that was blue that had elastic at the top and was a good fit, not sure if it is still offered.
I have no expertise concerning explosion potential, but think it is quite low unless you do something very wrong. If you look at the older mills - the flour just falls into an open metal hopper, and the same is true with the many ofthe current mills like the Komo, MockMill and others. I used a cloth that was pretty finely knit, and had no issues.
For the feed tube, you can make something work by going to the juice isle of your store and looking at the various juice containers - I found an orange juice container that fit quite nicely, just cut the bottom open.
Great. Perfect. Thanks very much, Barry.
Paul