<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>>

Thanks for all the friendly and supportive responses to my questions about
milling my own rice and bean flours.  A lot of people were curious about
the advantages and disadvantages of milling your own flour so I will start
with a summary of that.

Advantages of milling your own flour:
        Once you own a mill, it's much cheaper than buying specialty
flours.  (~35 cents per pound for bulk  short grain rice verses over $2 a
pound for rice flour)
        Freedom to experiment with novel flours
        As long as your mill is used only for gluten free flours, you do
not need to be concerned with contamination.
        Whole grains and beans can be stored for very long times with out
spoiling so you can buy in large quantities and mill the flour as you need
it.
        Once flour is milled, the vitamins and other nutrients oxidize
rapidly, as a result freshly milled flour is more nutritious.

Disadvantages of milling your own flour:
        The mills are expensive.
        Flours may not be as fine as commercial flours.
        Milling your own flour can be a hassle (messy, time consuming, etc.)

What you can grind depends to a large extent on what kind of mill you own.
The following web site describes advantages and disadvantages of different
types of mills.

http://waltonfeed.com/grinder.html

I own two mills (OK, I admit it, I'm a kitchen gadget freak).  One is a
Magic Mill III which is an impact type grinder.  It's fast and makes fine
flour.  It can not be used to grind nuts or oily seeds or to make coarsely
ground cereals or meals.  It's very loud.  Kind of sounds like your running
a jet engine in the kitchen.  The other is a Marcato hand mill, it is a
burr type grinder.  It's good for grinding nuts and making cracked or
rolled grains but it's slow and you have to run the stuff through several
times if you want a fine flour.  It doesn't make noise but you get a work
out if you grind very much.

And finally here is a summary of the responses on what to grind.

1.  Most people said you could grind almost anything but be sure to check
for compatibility with your machine.  (For example nuts can not be ground
in impact type grinders)

2.  Short grain brown and white rice were very popular mostly because they
are cheap.  Short grain white rice is often coated with corn starch which
helps the texture of the flour.

3.  Several people had success grinding garbonzo beans.

4.  Other things people had ground successfully included corn, millet,
buckwheat, and wild rice.

Some things people had problems with included:

1.  tapioca -- stuck to the grinder stones and they had to be cleaned
2.  navy beans (made everybody (celiac and non-celiac) sick)
3.  Several people commented that home milled rice flour was grittier than
commercial flours.

Since it's taken me forever to write this summary I've had a chance to try
milling a bunch of different stuff.  The things I've had success milling in
the Magic Mill are short grain white rice (Calrose), soy beans, garbonzo
beans, tapioca pearls, millet, and teff.  In the hand mill I've been able
to make very nice flour from almonds and walnuts and I've cracked quinoa,
rice, and amaranth to make a kind of muesli.

One last comment.  I owned my mills before I was diagnosed with CD and used
them to grind wheat.  In the Magic Mill there is a reservoir inside the
mill where flour is recycled to produce finer grinds.  It is very difficult
to get all the flour out of this reservoir.  I had to disassemble my mill
to get all the wheat flour out of the reservoir.  I wouldn't want to do it
again.  This reservoir means there will be cross contamination between
different kinds of flours you grind in the mill.  Bottom line:  Don't share
a mill with some one who grinds wheat or other gluten containing grains.