Dick's Mill Restoration Project

05/31/2026

Dick's Mill now has a new front door latch! And not just any latch, but a hand forged one that was hand made by our resident Blacksmith, Bernie Tappell. Bernie came last week and installed the latch, and then looked over other projects that he will be undertaking for the mill restoration. We are lucky to have Bernie on the Dick's Mill team. Real Blacksmiths are not found on every street corner! Bernie is also the head Blacksmith at our annual Steam Engine Show in September. Check out Missouri River Valley Steam Engine Assn. website and page for more information on when to see Bernie working in his Blacksmith shop! Thank you Bernie!

05/21/2026

05/18/2026

Last week we were able to place three pieces of the original equipment back onto the second floor of Dick‘s Mill. Greg brought his service truck and with the help of Robbie and Christie Ramey and my wife Mary, it went smoothly.  In the photos you see the flour dresser that Greg restored being lifted to the upstairs door. Greg put a lot of hours and meticulous work into restoring this piece. We will still have to do some stain work to blend the new wood with the old. The other two pieces installed were the cornmeal sifter and the Eureka horizontal scouring machine. There is a lot of work yet to be done, but for us this was a major step forward.
 And to top off a good week, we received a couple of very nice donations from two of our great supporters! Jerry Steinkuhler of Concordia stopped by to visit the mill and leave us a check. And Ellis Tuttle of Columbia sent a check and a nice letter in the mail. Ellis also has a nice teaching display made from an old wood auger that is used to show children how the mills augers work. He is donating this educational display to Dick‘Mill. We really want to thank Jerry and Ellis for their support of our project! 

05/14/2026

 I want to give thanks to Debi, the owner of Copies Etc. of Boonville for the excellent work and attention to detail that she gives her customers. She has been helping me with all of the lettering that’s had to be replaced due to fading of the original on all of the mill equipment. The doors on the cleaner/scouring machine were missing and Steve Winters of Columbia built the new doors out of Poplar wood. Using a vintage 1887 magazine ad, Debi was able to make exact templates of the original lettering so that I could re-spray the painted manufacturers information. She made a two stage set of stencils so that I could use two colors like the original. It turned out great and is exactly as original. And Debi has been donating her time and materials to the Dick‘s Mill Project. If you need signs, banners, or other specialty work contact Copies Etc. of Boonville, Missouri. Thank you.Debi !

04/28/2026

The Eureka Close Scouring Machine is now finished with the exception of the ornate lettering that will go on the door on each side. The original doors were "taken" as souvenirs many years ago. Steve made new ones and I experimented with stains to make them look original. Every piece of this machine was disassembled, cleaned, sandblasted, wire brushed, primed, and painted. Over 280 bolts, nuts, washers, and wood screws individually cleaned and painted! The wood was all cleaned and touched up with stains, and coated with a "warm glow" satin polyurethane to give it a "original, used" look. Nearly every piece of metal was rusted beyond use and had to be reformed. New sieve screens were custom make by Commodity Traders International of Illinois. This machine is now fully functional!
Greg has the flour dresser that he has been restoring ready to return to the mill also. He has the inner reel also finished, but it will still need to be covered with the silk liner. There are four more reels of this type in our other equipment, and when they are ready, Cindy at Dillard Mill has offered to help us cover them. Mill people are the best! The "St. Louis Corn Meal Bolt" was finished a couple of months ago, and Greg will be bringing his service truck and extendable boom up in the next week to place these three finished pieces into the upper story of the mill. These are the first pieces to go upstairs and will lead to installing line shafts and elevators. I expect that we are looking at two more years of hard work and a fair amount of money to make Adolph Dick's Mill operational again! Many thanks to the Dick's Mill crew for their skill and craftsmanship!

04/27/2026

Our friend Cindy Newton sent a nice donation to us this week! Cindy has supported Dick's Mill since the early days, and her help as well as everyone else who has donated is very much appreciated! With the building up and mostly completed on the exterior, people are assuming that the work is done. But there is a million things to be completed before the old mill will run again. Each piece of equipment has to be meticulously restored to working order, the steam engine restored/installed, boiler shed built, line shafts restored and installed, wooden elevators restored along with a hundred wooden grain legs, lighting installed, rock foundation facia completed, along with two forty foot storage containers of the "guts" of the mill that need restoring! There are a myriad of things that need to completed including the front deck and handicap ramp, all of which costs a lot of money. Sometime in the near future I will have to finalize the granite and bronze monument with the names of donors who donated $2500 or more. The Dick's Mill Project has been 100% funded by you, the public! The levels are Bronze-$2500, Silver-$5000, Gold-10,000, Platinum-$15,000, and Diamond-$20,000 and above. This large granite monument with a bronze plaque will be installed at the front corner of the mill. Many thanks to all who have donated!
I also wish to introduce you to Steve Winters of Columbia! Steve is a master woodworker who is doing a lot of behind the scenes work for Dick's Mill. In this photo, Steve has just delivered all of the parts to rebuild the upper and lower pulley housings for elevators #1 and #5. Steve built these from Poplar wood just like the originals that are too rotted to use. Thank you Steve!

04/15/2026

Making progress on the Eureka Scouring and Seed cleaning machine. I wanted to share an interesting discovery from today. On the end of the machine, I could see some faint writing and could not quite decipher it. I sprayed a light coat of semi gloss urethane on the area, and after several hours of drying, I lightly sanded the area with fine sandpaper, and the original lettering appeared. It says, “No 1. Capacity 20 to 30 bush per hour. I will have this copied and have stencils made exactly as the original so that it can be repainted. Working on this old equipment never gets boring and you learn something new every day.


04/09/2026

Greg sent me a photo of the flour dresser that he has been working on. He just finished building all four doors from scratch! The original doors had been stolen from the mill years ago. There were family reunions held at the mill back in the sixties, and people wandering through the mill would decide that they needed to take home souvenirs. So many items that had ornate lettering on them were removed and have been lost to time. But one piece of equipment that was up high and hard to get to, still had it's back door on. Greg used this for a guide to build the new ones for the flour dresser and do they look great!
I don't have any photos at the moment to show the work that Steve Winters has been doing, but he is working on all of the elevator tops and bottoms. The bottoms were in the basement, and suffered severe rot. Even the wooden pulleys inside are being rebuilt by Steve.
I am about two thirds done with the Eureka Scouring and Cleaning machine. One of our members, and my cousin, Herman Fortman machined special dies for my bead roller so that we could reproduce sheet metal for the fan cage that matched the original that was rusted beyond use. Will have some photos on soon.
With the weather warming up, I should be back on the foundation rock work soon, and Greg and I will also be getting started on the line shafts and steam engine. I expect that some of our other club members will be getting involved with this also and you will begin to learn more about them!

03/17/2026

Progress! The Dick's Mill Crew has been working on equipment and fixtures of the mill during the roller coaster weather that is a Missouri tradition. The first photo is one of the flour dressers that Greg is bringing back to life. This was the most severely damaged piece of equipment in the mill. Years of rain and snow had rotted it to the point that most people thought it was hopeless. Greg has meticulously brought it back! One of the two wooden augers in the bottom also had to be fabricated.
Steve Winters of Columbia is working on the tops and bottoms of elevators 2, 3, and 4 while also fabricating the parts of the boxes for the top and bottom of numbers 1 and 5 that I am working on. Greg found some nice hard maple to use for the frames and bearing blocks of the drive pulleys of 1 and 5. Elevators 2, 3, and 4 have wooden pulleys that were all rotted beyond use, and Steve is in the process of duplicating them. I hope to have some photos of his work soon.
The other photos show the Eureka seed cleaner and scouring machine. I have it disassembled and ready to sandblast the cast iron parts, and have been working on cleaning and repairing the wooden parts. This was a challenge to get apart, but with lots of photos should go back together fine. The original doors with ornate lettering were stolen years ago, so they will have to be fabricated and the lettering copied from the old ad I found online.
As soon as the weather warms and stabilizes I will get back to the rock facia on the foundation of the mill, as well as work on the building itself.

02/22/2026

I have some photos here to show you the progress that Greg is making with the first of three flour dressers. This one is slightly worse condition than the others though they all have severe rot and rust due to the poor condition the mill was in for so many years. Rain, snow, sunlight, pigeons, raccoons, rats, mice and snakes as well as time have taken its toll on all the equipment in the mill. But as you can see in the photos, Greg is taking one piece at a time, duplicating or refurbishing if possible, and reassembling as he goes. The Dick's Mill Project has been blessed along the way with people showing up out of the blue and offering their services to bring this dream to life. Greg is the man who brought the giant crane to help disassemble the mill last spring. I am in awe of Greg, there is absolutely nothing he can't figure out, fix, build, or repair. I want to give a big thank you to Greg and all the other volunteers who are bringing Dick's Mill back to life!