1800s Coffee Grinder Restoration

I’ve seen everyone and their mother restore these coffee grinders on youtube for some reason. I guess it’s because they are so cheap and ubiquitous in antique shops. Anyway, I was offered this antique coffee grinder to restore and I decided to take that offer up since all the cool kids have done one.

The owner of the coffee grinder wanted to minimize any replacement parts and preferred I keep it looking “old” but without the rust. In typical Restoration Station™ fashion I ended up doing some re-engineering, but I kept it invisible unless you were to take the grinder apart and look inside.

The wood finish is shellac as that was the main wood finish used back then and it’s food-safe(ish). I used a cast iron seasoning to blacken and protect the metal from corrosion since that’s also definitionally food-safe. I’ve had a lot of luck seasoning with crisbee cream cast iron seasoning, so that’s what I used. The way I got such a nice dark season on my pieces was doing about 4 light coats at 400-450°F for 1 hour in the powder coating oven then a final coat around 500°F in my oven at home

I wasn’t able to find a manufacturer or model number on this grinder as the tag in the drawer was illegible. If you’re one of the rare people reading this description (hi) and you also happen to know anything about this antique coffee grinder, please drop any information you might have in the description below.