Steelej, thanks for explaining the hand lever. A friend and I are building 2 rolling mills. If you go to page 2 of this forum you will find a post by my brother, MDHoffmann, dated 5/7/2001. The photos are gone. Pull up his profile and check out his shop. Rolling mill photos are there. He built his by eyeballing other photos of rolling mills as seen in a knife magazine. We are building ours based on my brothers. As they say, it is not rocket science.

Another source of rolling mill photos is located at Kayne and Son. They are the only U.S. manufacturer I am aware of.
www.kayneandson.com (http://www.kayneandson.com)
They use a motor w/a gear reduction box. A gear reduction motor can be used as well as a pulley system as previously posted.

Billets do jam from time to time and I have to say that at least one belt to provide a slip or clutch point to protect the expensive motor (and possibly gears as well) would always be part of any future rollers I make. gears and hydraulics have atendancy to fail just after the stores shut and the first if the hammer-in (roll-in??) guests arrive. Belts and pulleys with cogs and chains are infinately more easy to repair than gears. imho.