blake murphy wrote:
>
> my mortar is pretty small (about four inches across). i find with whole
> black peppercorns, you sort of keep your left hand loosely over the top
> while holding the mortar while you pound enough with the pestle in your
> right hand to crack the pepper a little bit. then you can resume your
> normal movements to get a finer grind without it flying all over the place.
>
> not sure if i made that clear, but i hope you get the idea.

That's pretty much what I do, and it doesn't
work well. It takes a fair amount of force to
crush a peppercorn, and when it goes, other
peppercorns go flying out. It's hard to apply
force and cover the mortar at the same time.
And until the last one is crushed, they act like
ball bearings and prevent much progress from
being made in further reducing the particle size.