Hi Matthew,

We mill our tree-ring wood samples with a modified coffee mill. The
modification is a metal plate that we have put in the cap of the mill in
order to redirect the wood pieces towards the rotating cutting device. The
angle between this metal plate and the cap has to be tested and optimized.

Milling works better with well dried wood. Milling doesn't work at all with
cellulose, even if liquid N2 cooled!

Advantages: cheap (less that 50 US$), little and easy to use, needed
fineness of wood reached.

Disadvantage: time consumming (approximately 5 minutes per sample for
milling and 5 more minutes for recovering a large part of the milled sample)

I hope it helps. If you want more details about our precise mill, contact
me directely. I could send you these infos and pictures of our mill.

Bye,

Silvio

At 23:41 24.11.99 -0500, you wrote:
>Question:
>Any advice on how to mill tree-ring wood samples to the fine-grained (<250
>microns) fraction suggested for cellulose extraction? Presently, I using a
>modified cuisinart with moderate success.


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