I have gone through several mills and heard about the Mankitchen on HN a while back. It's expensive but it's the best pepper mill I have ever used.

https://mannkitchen.eu/products/the-original-pepper-cannon-p...

Peugeot is the gold standard. The traditional hourglass shape is around $40-50 for the normal-sized version, and they have a lot of other modern designs. A lot of competing brands buy the internal mechanism from Peugeot.

(If you're curious about the name: Yes, it was originally the same company as the Peugeot car/motorcycle company. It was spun out into a separate company at some point, but still owned by the descendants of the original Peugeot family.)

Mannkitchen Pepper Cannon. I absolutely adore this device and have bought a few as friends for discerning cooks and mechanical gadget lovers. Build quality is utterly fantastic and the quality of the grind is excellent. Most importantly the ability for it to grind copious amounts of pepper with minimal input is unmatched. I tried just about all the other ones recommended on various forums but none match up, not even close. Yeah it's $200 but oh man is it nice.

I have two of "The Original Greek Pepper Mill" - it's an 8" tall copper thing. It's been amazing. Why do I have two of them, you ask? I kept my mom's after she passed; it was probably 30 years old already.

If you want to grind a ton of pepper with fine grind control, you could also use one of the modern generations of manual coffee grinders, like the MHW-3Bomber Blade R3 or the cheaper TIMEMORE knockoff. They have excellent and fast and precise grind mechanisms. I'm not sure about the MHW but the timemore will stand alone with the bottom of so you can use it like you'd use a coffee grinder, or attach the grinds cup if you want to crank out a lot.

(I'm using an older, cheaper manual coffee grinder as my sichuan peppercorn grinder and it's solid for that but I do prefer the greek mill from an aesthetic perspective -- and it's so dang solid.)

No idea if it'll last 40-50 years, but I've used this probably about 10(?), and it's been great. You do need a small funnel to fill it though. It's not the standard size or functionality, but I've discovered I actually prefer this ratchet style. (It's fun!)

https://www.surlatable.com/product/sur-la-table-ratchet-mill...

  does anyone want to recommend a decent commercial, easily available option?

I went looking for a mill for white pepper recently. I've a 50 year old Danish mill I'd love to repair, but that's a project for another day. Serious Eats seems to like the Kuhn Rikon ones but none of the long term reviews on the KR site are positive. Peugeot naysayers seem to be popping up more frequently, and for that price I'd expect better. Each seems to attract a few specific types of complaints which to me seems to lend a bit of credibility.

In any case, my new Fletcher's Mill grinder just showed up today and superficially it looks like they've only made small changes. The adjustment mechanism is the same and similar to the classic Peugeot mechanism. I've not taken it apart, but I believe the grinding mechanism is the same two stage unit as my old one.

These are well regarded, and I don’t have any complaints about mine (other than the style is basic black): https://www.unicornmills.org/

Mechanism is solid. More aggressive than your typical grinder, but maybe not as to the same degree as a Pepper Cannon.

I would just call them to order though.

Not a fan of all the hexclad stuff, but I have to admit their pepper & salt grinders are excellent.

I was given the large set: https://hexclad.com/products/hexmill-salt-and-pepper-grinder...

Seems to be pretty similar to the other one posted, but about half the price ($129 for just the pepper grinder, $200 for the pair - they go on sale down to ~$85 on amazon every now and then as well).

Having the built in cap is actually pretty damn useful, too - you can just grind into the cap and measure tsp out of it directly without needing another container.

Easily the best grinders I have ever used, going strong 2 years in now. I use them just about daily.

I bought the cheapest coffee grinder I could find at the grocery store. Does a fantastic job. I usually grind up about a half cup at a time.

I've got an OXO that has worked great since I bought it in 2014. It's an ugly piece of white plastic, but it's efficient, unfussy, ergonomic, and adjustable.

https://a.co/d/609d3IX

We recently bought the "Trudeau Seville Pepper Mill, 6-Inch". It was quire inexpensive, has an all metal mechanism, and does a coarse grind that my wife likes. We've used it daily for a couple years now and it's been flawless.

I have been happy with my pepper mill with a Crushgrind mechanism.

(The mill happens to be from Normann Copenhagen but Crushgrind supplies mechanisms to a number of pepper mill manufacturers as well as selling their own.)

Peugeots are good and if you want something handsome too, there are Alessi Twergi mills designed by Ettore Sottsass with good mechanism too. We only got it a few years ago but I think it will last.

I've been using a Peugeot 23461 for 5 years of near daily cooking with no issues. Jut finished making a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich with some aggressive peppering with it.

It seems to list the mechanism on each model. A bunch of them seem to use Peugeot for the mechanism and I have a such branded grinder that seems to hold up really well..

Peugeot used to be the best but apparently have degraded quality over the years.

Zassenhaus and Zwilling are both German options of the same quality or better.

I use a coffee grinder with a hand crank.