I love using my new Mockmill, but I don’t love the tedium of sifting. Remembering an older post that described using a massager to agitate a sieve, and not owning a massager, I wondered if I could get a similar result using my cordless drill. I took a scrap of 1 1/4 inch dowel and drilled a 1/4 inch hole off center. I inserted a carriage bolt through the hole. The resulting implement looks like this:
I placed my sieve in a stainless steel bowl and shook it with my agitator. It worked, but it was cumbersome to hold the bowl, the sieve, and the drill at the same time. Also, I didn’t like the flour dust in the air.
My sieve (50 mesh, from Breadtopia), it turns out, perfectly nestles inside a five gallon bucket.
A trip to Lowe’s yielded a food grade bucket and lid. I drilled a hole where the bottom edge of the sieve sits. I chucked my eccentric agitator through the hole. By a stroke of luck, the hole happened to land at the right height for the drill to sit upright while it is chucked into the bucket.
I put the lid on and ran the drill on its higher speed setting. Sure enough, the sieve jiggled furiously and shook the flour with more vigor than I could apply by hand.
The process works, it keeps the dust under control, and it's fun.
- Log in to post comments
Very cool! How loud is it?
TomP
Not bad, much less loud than the mill.
I love this kind of problem solving.
Ditto!
This is a great idea!!
I had never been able to get as much flour as I wanted in my 40 sieve and so never used it.
I must try to adapt your idea to a small scale.
Thanks for this post- it keeps the work area dust free too.
PS Can you show a picture of the inside where your agitator is?
Here is the interior before the sieve goes in. You can see that there is a small screw opposite the agitator, to steady the opposite side of the sieve. One of these days I am going to replace the hardware with stainless steel.