It would be nice to publish the existing plans so the exact details could be studied and suggestions made. It's possible that some simple dimensional changes or possibly the addition of another "stage"' to the machine could make it work with oats and other grains. Great idea!
Good Goat: it could well be that the dimmer switch allows for using the machine with other grains. Because it allows for the change of force relative to the weight of the grain.
@@daphneraven6745 instead of a hard-to-find blower, maybe a sliding door to adjust air and just connect a fan from the motor pulley? Or bathroom vent fan?
@@TheRainHarvester you can use the reverse side of a shop vac as well. they can be had pretty cheap on sale if you dont feel comfortable using your existing shop vac near things that will be eaten
You commented that the rate limiting step for threshing is the preparation of the bundles to insert into the machine. I thresh with a Toro leaf blower/shredder and had similar issues. This year I tried making bundles for threshing when I harvested the wheat. I put a bunch of rubber bands around my left wrist, gathered a bunch of stalks that seemed the right amount with my left hand; then cut with the sickle and slipped a rubber band around the end. The bunches were about 2-3" in diameter. These were gathered and tied into sheaves to stand and dry down/ mature. When I ws ready to thresh, the bunches were already gathered and ready to insert. It went MUCH faster.
I can see how those pre-made bundles that would make the threshing a lot faster! However, I'd still be taking the time to line up the heads in the field...I wonder if that would end up being faster overall or not. Thanks for sharing that.
@@VegetableAcademyI wonder if you made a bigger feed system to beat the grain out, and had a second vent to blow air from the front to back to push big pieces out before the reach the separation stage where they get caught and backed up would work. Also, it’s not necessary cause to pick through that doesn’t seem like a whole lot it’s not exactly perfect but nothing is and it does it’s job wonderful. But I wonder if you could build a second little chamber on the side you could dump into for a second screening to cut out the bigger pieces your left with. A lot of work I know but just a opinion!
Worth mentioning to anyone trying to recreate this, if you’re going to use a dimmer switch on the blower motor it has to be a DC motor or else the dimmer switch won’t do anything.
@@TheRainHarvesterI have been using the same dimmer a regular Home Depot 12 amp dimer for 30 years to control a Riobi Router and it keeps working. I am not sure if todays dimmers are as good 🤔
Fascinating! I moved into the neighbourhood this summer and have been admiring your wheat landing strip. The lovely folks at the community garden told me look you up…the channel does not disappoint!
I live in an apartment and do not thresh my own grain. But this was so interesting to watch. Just a mention that a short greeting from the little lady would have brought her into the moment a little better. Salute. :))
I think it's great what your doing to help people grow and process wheat at home ensuring food when there's none to be had in grocery stores, or prices are out of reach for average consumers. Awesome work thank you.
This is a nice build. A couple of point that I see. I think it would have been better to separate threshing and winnowing into two separate machines. Beat it out onto a shaker screen and into a bin. Then run the contents of the bin through the winnower as many times as necessary. The other thing is that most modern varieties of grain have been bred to dry in the field without shattering. I'm far south so it may be different other places, but here, there's no benefit to binding and shocking. I cut everything as close to the head as I can and leave the straw standing.
Nice threshing machine that you got there, to give you better result in oats and maybe even make it work for over crop like beans you can try to copy what we use in combine harvert to make them work in any crops. First you can add a system of fixed threshing finger that you go between those of the drum (they could also be set at different depht to change the threshing intensity). A small mash would also make it harder for the grain to fall through or as we do on combine you could use a fine plywood board that would slide undreneath the mash, then by pushing it in you woud block a part of your screan, letting you adjust your threshing intensity by forcing the grain to make multiple turn inside the thresher.
For my flax seed I ripple off the seed heads then run the seed heads through a wide gap corn grinding machine. It breaks the round seed pods and releases all the seed without damage to the seed. I then take that and run it through a couple screens before running it through my seed cleaner. Works like a champ.
@@sherryhayhurst3027 This is not mine but looks very similar. This one is a little better built but they do work great. Once set you can clean seed quite quickly. There are plans on the web so you can build one. ua-cam.com/video/u4c1-ajSILA/v-deo.html
I have had great success harvesting oats with a blueberry rake. I simply walk through the oats and rake the berries off the top of a standing crop and drop the grain into a garbage barrel. I can fill a barrel in about 20 minutes. I have used it as chicken feed and didn’t remove the chaff but I’m sure it could be beaten and blown in a similar fashion as your invention.
I saw your lentil short vid and wanted to see more about the machine. Great idea/design and implementation! My thoughts on the design: Having to catch the grain in a closed bin is a pain. Maybe if you just aimed the blower up the grain chute you wouldn't need to seal the grain bin? Someone else suggested a vacuum to suck the chaff away. That's a great idea, but I think you'd need something like a leaf-blower/sucker to avoid having to redesign the system. Otherwise you'd need to make a filter to protect the blower, and you'll have to empty the chaff from it every so often. To get around the straw problem, could you have a larger exit from the beater drum? Direct the output over a longer grid that is flat, but has an open outflow for the straw to go through. So the grain and chaff fall down, but the straw goes through and out. If may need some airflow to keep the straw from jamming the outflow though. Possibly a design that need several iterations, unfortunately.
I love machines like this. Well done. For the oats, perhaps if the top rotating separator fingers passed between stationary fingers spaced in-between - something that would provide interference, that would do a better job of breaking open those hulls. Again, excellent work.
That's an interesting idea that I hadn't thought of. It would certainly add another degree of disturbance that could help release the hulls. Thanks for sharing that.
My seed cleaner uses a vacuum instead of a blower. With the oats I'd just use the old methods of threshing then put the chaff and seed through your seed cleaner. The looks like it does a great job with wheat. With the oats you could stomp the heads as well if needed. A long stick with a chain or leather strap and a shorter stick will make a fine thresher for your oats. That way you are not stomping with dirty shoes on your nice grain.
I grew up on a (for the period) large dairy farm (700 acres) in the 50/60s. I spent not a few hours cranking a ancient hand power winnowing 'machine' made of wood. We raised oats, one time wheat, and my comment is I think your airflow is (a) to heavy for oats, (b) not enough volume and (c) same for 'trash' air space. I was 10ish and at that age you cannot turn that big wooden fan at any great speed, the output for chaff and debris was large and the grain simply dropped out of the bottom. I say this, it could be (probably is) as wrong as possible, as I am working from 70 some yo memory. But Lord knows I just love that machine and attempt!!! Reminds me of those childhood times, which I am sure remember a lot nicer than they lived.
Super cool gadget! I'm not far enough into my homesteading journey to need this yet, but I have absorbed the information and will hopefully find myself needing one of these soon. (Soil amending is no joke, man. It's taking seemingly forever.)
Man your getting somewhere it looks like trial and error and with time and more use you’ll get the right system and proportions and measurement and what not down. And build a perfect one man. This one here is still awesome tho. I would use the hell out of this if I had grain to separate lol. Looks like something I could do to pass time.
Mad impressive! Two things that could help: 1. Add an earlier stage with perpendicular blades to cut the wheat, so you don't get the large pieces. It might be difficult, but I imagine with a blunt enough edge and little enough force it would just break the stalks but not the grain, but maybe that's not the case. 2. Integrate the blower with the roller such that the outlet is the full width of the roller, so you have more surface area which will reduce the amount of chaff that falls through. It's already being agitated at that step, so it will have a much higher chance of being exposed to the air flow than the small channel, where the berries could block the airflow from the chaff. Or just add a second blower stage.
Very innovative. From looking at hammer mills for processing hard rock gold ore, they use a very fine screen, so that the end product is very fine - liberating free mill gold. Perhaps you might have an easier time with the oats if you use a smaller screen size, but not so small they get turned into dust ofc.
Super nice. I need one. Very hard to find a small scale thresher. Even harder to find a small scale hand or pedal powered one! Very nice job and your life just became a lot easier! Wish I was handy like that.
> I presume you've used the old fashioned method of just beating the wheat stalks against something to break loose the wheat grains. And you can winnow thew grain by tossing it up in a stream of air to blow away the chaff. That sounds like small scale threshing and winnowing to me. What am I missing?
@@SeattlePioneer Yes I sure have, but it gets to be a VERY large job when we are talking 2 acres of grain. I also find that method isn't very efficient and a lot of grain gets wasted. Something like this would be nice. www.google.com/search?q=treadle+powered+thresher&oq=treadle+powered+thresher&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIICAEQABgWGB4yDQgCEAAYhgMYgAQYigXSAQgzOTYwajFqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:2e856ac9,vid:MxXGS8nxZTo,st:0
Pretty simple design that seems to work quite well. Rub bars and concaves would be hard to build. Fan speed combined with geometry for gravity separation works well for separation which replaces sieves on a combine.
I think that you can simulate the effect of rubbing the oats in your hands if you have two rubber belts running vertically in opposite directions with an adjustable gap that you set to match the grain size. The trick may be to have a slight different in the belt speeds.
Yeah. An adjustable gap would be key, as would the ability to apply uniform pressure along the belt surface. I think only one of the belts would need to be moving. thanks for the idea. I was thinking about rollers and spinning discs to create the rubbing effect, but never belts.
@@DavidTuckerII That is a neat idea. If you built a custom sized chamber around the spinning vacuum beater and ran the grain through the chamber, you might just cause enough friction to clean off the last hulls. I don't think it would break the grains, and the spiral brush configurations on most vacuum beaters could be really helpful in moving the grain through the chamber.
@@VegetableAcademy U need a set of concaves around your cylinder that are adjustable like combines,,,ur cylinder speed needs to be increased for oats around 1100 rpm
.....or also I could see a set of two adjustable face plates ,oscillating against each other with the right gap between them; much like the pad of a palm orbiting sander does.
Just saw one of your shorts which led me to your channel and I'm very impressed with this! Forgive me if this has been discussed in a previous, are you making this available or just something for your personal use only? Either way this is fantastic! New subscriber from Ontario Canada!
Welcome here. At the moment, this is just a threshing machine that we will continue to use personally, but people are encouraged to take inspiration from this design to build one of their own.
Get a 6'foldable table and put it against a wall. Get a bunch of the stems and push the seeds against the wall. Grab the bunch and your wheat is ready to thresh.
For the oat you could add a downward ramp with a belt sander with a rubber belt instead of sandpaper. Rolling the oats, at a reduced speed would strip the husks off. Then into your separator.
Worth looking at the threshing design of a combine harvester where as well as centrifugal speed/force there is rubbing of the heads between 2 surfaces, a grid and a rasp bar. this adjustable gap deals with the white tips and husk on oats better.
I wonder if the flaps like you see in grocery store freezers would be better than that plastic door when you stick the heads of the stalks in the machine. Less of an opening for the grain to escape when its smacked. Do you by chance have a video series or documents on how to build/possibly redesign?
Very nice design! I've been working on a cyclone design, but I like your cascade separator so much. I snip the heads of all my stocks and toss them in a hopper. I'm trying to think of a "stripper" design for my streaker oats.
So grateful your sharing this great idea. I had made up my mind I wasn't gonna bother with this crop, chaff and all. Now, I hope I'll be able/have it built soon. Curious tho, get your own patent? Many will be needing this soon. I'm one of them. Thanks again.
I'm glad you found this encouraging! The thresher definitely makes the grain harvesting more pleasant and efficient than just beating it with a stick and tossing everything in the wind to separate the chaff. I have no worries about increasing our grain production next year now, knowing I will be able to handle the threshing with ease. Please send me some photos if you end up building something similar.
Are you ready to take your vegetable game to the next level? Get started with my Free Workshop for home growers: www.vegetableacademy.com/yt-freeworkshop
@@redstone1999screw-ups happen. I've fed vines into a shredder and had them catch me, yanking me towards the machine. Luckily the vines broke instead of breaking something in my arm, or dragging me in. I'd been working for a bit, wasn't thinking and had got too comfortable around the machine. It just takes a second of being distracted and off-balance. You lean against the flap to stabilize yourself and whoopsie!
@@samuelmellars7855 I had to stop an adult helper from sticking his hand into an electric wood chipper to unblock it. His excuse was the motor was going to tripped the fuse. I said, " Unplugging the chipper was 100 % safer way to unblock the machine". Loose clothing around equipment is another thing I see people do that begs to get someone hurt.
The process of growing and processing wheat into flour is really very complex. This video illustrates only two of the many steps needed ---threshing and winnowing. ALL of the steps have been massively industrialized, producing very cheap flour as an end product. So I really can't see much of a reason to replicate the whole process on a very slight scale of production, which would inevitably require LOTS of labor. Of course, everybody needs a hobby, but that's the only basis I can see for replicating grain and flour production as a home industry. What would be your reason for adopting this kind of process? I might adde that for several years an apple tree on the public right of way near where I live was neglected and all it's fruit fell on the ground each year. I hate food waste, so for several years I picked the apples, washed them, cut them up, shredded them in a food shredder then squeezed them into cider, straining out pieces of apple along the way. That produced a hugely good apple cider, but at the cost of a LOT of labor! The lesson I learned was just how much labor goes into producing food. Producing your own flour would be FAR more labor intensive than my apple cider, I suggest. So---- please explain why this attracts you as an activity?
I bet itd be possible to make one that runs totally off compressed air. Use a compressed air feed for the blower and an impeller on the beater drum drive shaft instead of a gear and pulley system. You could put an airline regulator on both air lines to adjust the force for whichever crop you are working with.
Seeing as you have to double handle each stem anyway, would it not work to trim the heads off each stem and let it drop into a bucket, rather than line them up, and then have a hopper you tip all the heads into so they feed into the thresher by themselves? That should work for oats then too as you handle it once above a bucket and then whatever drops off goes through the hopper.
Nice! Imagine that machine doing acres per day? I like to eat cheap. Your state university extension folks likely can connect you with real plans and engineering. Stay safe.
Very cool! For clearing obstructions at the top of chute, would a small hinged door provide better access? A little weather stripping around the door would minimize forced air loss.
Thanks for the idea. A hinged door would definitely make it easier to access the stuck straw. However, I need that straw to still pass down the same channels because there is always wheat or oats mixed in there too that I wouldn't want to just discard. I've found that as long as I keep long pieces of straw from entering the machine in the first place, things run a lot more smoothly and I don't need to use the clean out poker all that much.
Yeah. Zinnia seeds look like they've got a substantial size and weight to them so I think they'd work great with this type of machine. Something really tiny like poppy seeds might have a little more trouble with separating the chaff from the seeds.
Just thinking for the oats. if the beater had to beat the oats through a bristle head like a broom head maybe it would remove the husk. Might help break up some of the wheat reeds too.
On a windy day, take your wheat and pour it from bucket to bucket a few times. The wind will blow the husks away and the wheat will land in the bucket.
How would you say the productivity rate of this machine compares to old-fashioned threshing and winnowing by hand? It might be interesting to do a "John Henry" style side-by-side comparison. Like, you could have a race where each contestant has ten bundles of wheat, and you see whether your machine is any faster than someone just flailing it and pouring from bucket to bucket in front of a fan.
You could make a second stage to put the chaff through the same process again thus removing seeds that went into the original chaff route and missed the first seed bin
I bet you could use parts from an old drill press to upgrade this. They already have a variable speed belt driven pulley system with control, capacitor, and an on/off button and switch. You could probably just take the top case and motor off a drill press as is and fit it to this thresher.
It would be nice to publish the existing plans so the exact details could be studied and suggestions made. It's possible that some simple dimensional changes or possibly the addition of another "stage"' to the machine could make it work with oats and other grains. Great idea!
I love this comment, that's exactly what I was thinking!
Good Goat: it could well be that the dimmer switch allows for using the machine with other grains. Because it allows for the change of force relative to the weight of the grain.
@@daphneraven6745 instead of a hard-to-find blower, maybe a sliding door to adjust air and just connect a fan from the motor pulley? Or bathroom vent fan?
@@TheRainHarvester : Tyvk for sharing your idea; That sounds a whole lot more efficient than mine.
@@TheRainHarvester you can use the reverse side of a shop vac as well. they can be had pretty cheap on sale if you dont feel comfortable using your existing shop vac near things that will be eaten
We need a tutorial building video ASAP
You commented that the rate limiting step for threshing is the preparation of the bundles to insert into the machine. I thresh with a Toro leaf blower/shredder and had similar issues. This year I tried making bundles for threshing when I harvested the wheat. I put a bunch of rubber bands around my left wrist, gathered a bunch of stalks that seemed the right amount with my left hand; then cut with the sickle and slipped a rubber band around the end. The bunches were about 2-3" in diameter. These were gathered and tied into sheaves to stand and dry down/ mature. When I ws ready to thresh, the bunches were already gathered and ready to insert. It went MUCH faster.
I can see how those pre-made bundles that would make the threshing a lot faster! However, I'd still be taking the time to line up the heads in the field...I wonder if that would end up being faster overall or not. Thanks for sharing that.
@@VegetableAcademyI wonder if you made a bigger feed system to beat the grain out, and had a second vent to blow air from the front to back to push big pieces out before the reach the separation stage where they get caught and backed up would work.
Also, it’s not necessary cause to pick through that doesn’t seem like a whole lot it’s not exactly perfect but nothing is and it does it’s job wonderful. But I wonder if you could build a second little chamber on the side you could dump into for a second screening to cut out the bigger pieces your left with.
A lot of work I know but just a opinion!
Worth mentioning to anyone trying to recreate this, if you’re going to use a dimmer switch on the blower motor it has to be a DC motor or else the dimmer switch won’t do anything.
Not true. Ceiling fans use special dimmers for AC.
@@TheRainHarvesterthis isn't a special dimmer though. If you plan on using an AC motor, you will need a special dimmer or AC motor controller.
@@TheRainHarvesterI have been using the same dimmer a regular Home Depot 12 amp dimer for 30 years to control a Riobi Router and it keeps working. I am not sure if todays dimmers are as good 🤔
Awesome solution to a major barrier in small scale grain production!
Fascinating! I moved into the neighbourhood this summer and have been admiring your wheat landing strip. The lovely folks at the community garden told me look you up…the channel does not disappoint!
That's good to hear Debby. If you ever catch me working there, do stop by to say hello.
What neighborhood is this. I would love to see it too
I live in an apartment and do not thresh my own grain. But this was so interesting to watch. Just a mention that a short greeting from the little lady would have brought her into the moment a little better. Salute. :))
I think it's great what your doing to help people grow and process wheat at home ensuring food when there's none to be had in grocery stores, or prices are out of reach for average consumers. Awesome work thank you.
This is a nice build. A couple of point that I see. I think it would have been better to separate threshing and winnowing into two separate machines. Beat it out onto a shaker screen and into a bin. Then run the contents of the bin through the winnower as many times as necessary. The other thing is that most modern varieties of grain have been bred to dry in the field without shattering. I'm far south so it may be different other places, but here, there's no benefit to binding and shocking. I cut everything as close to the head as I can and leave the straw standing.
Nice threshing machine that you got there, to give you better result in oats and maybe even make it work for over crop like beans you can try to copy what we use in combine harvert to make them work in any crops.
First you can add a system of fixed threshing finger that you go between those of the drum (they could also be set at different depht to change the threshing intensity).
A small mash would also make it harder for the grain to fall through or as we do on combine you could use a fine plywood board that would slide undreneath the mash, then by pushing it in you woud block a part of your screan, letting you adjust your threshing intensity by forcing the grain to make multiple turn inside the thresher.
Way to go Quentin!!
For my flax seed I ripple off the seed heads then run the seed heads through a wide gap corn grinding machine. It breaks the round seed pods and releases all the seed without damage to the seed. I then take that and run it through a couple screens before running it through my seed cleaner. Works like a champ.
Make a video of it the process & functioning? Please!😁
@@sherryhayhurst3027 There are plenty of them on UA-cam to watch. It's pretty much the same as the others.
@@sherryhayhurst3027 This is not mine but looks very similar. This one is a little better built but they do work great. Once set you can clean seed quite quickly. There are plans on the web so you can build one. ua-cam.com/video/u4c1-ajSILA/v-deo.html
Brilliant! This would be great to make with teenagers .. food for thought!
Your videos are so underrated.
That's nice to hear Meredith. I'm glad you appreciate them.
I'd block off the waste outlet and use or modify the hole you made to send it to the back. Great home job guys!
I am so very impressed. Thank you for teaching us how it is done.
You're welcome Karen. This was a fun project for me and it's nice to be able to share what we've learned so far. I'm glad you found it helpful.
I have had great success harvesting oats with a blueberry rake. I simply walk through the oats and rake the berries off the top of a standing crop and drop the grain into a garbage barrel. I can fill a barrel in about 20 minutes. I have used it as chicken feed and didn’t remove the chaff but I’m sure it could be beaten and blown in a similar fashion as your invention.
I saw your lentil short vid and wanted to see more about the machine. Great idea/design and implementation!
My thoughts on the design:
Having to catch the grain in a closed bin is a pain. Maybe if you just aimed the blower up the grain chute you wouldn't need to seal the grain bin?
Someone else suggested a vacuum to suck the chaff away. That's a great idea, but I think you'd need something like a leaf-blower/sucker to avoid having to redesign the system. Otherwise you'd need to make a filter to protect the blower, and you'll have to empty the chaff from it every so often.
To get around the straw problem, could you have a larger exit from the beater drum? Direct the output over a longer grid that is flat, but has an open outflow for the straw to go through. So the grain and chaff fall down, but the straw goes through and out. If may need some airflow to keep the straw from jamming the outflow though. Possibly a design that need several iterations, unfortunately.
I never thought I would love something like this! Great job, now I'll be building one
I love machines like this. Well done. For the oats, perhaps if the top rotating separator fingers passed between stationary fingers spaced in-between - something that would provide interference, that would do a better job of breaking open those hulls.
Again, excellent work.
That's an interesting idea that I hadn't thought of. It would certainly add another degree of disturbance that could help release the hulls. Thanks for sharing that.
My seed cleaner uses a vacuum instead of a blower. With the oats I'd just use the old methods of threshing then put the chaff and seed through your seed cleaner. The looks like it does a great job with wheat. With the oats you could stomp the heads as well if needed. A long stick with a chain or leather strap and a shorter stick will make a fine thresher for your oats. That way you are not stomping with dirty shoes on your nice grain.
I grew up on a (for the period) large dairy farm (700 acres) in the 50/60s. I spent not a few hours cranking a ancient hand power winnowing 'machine' made of wood. We raised oats, one time wheat, and my comment is I think your airflow is (a) to heavy for oats, (b) not enough volume and (c) same for 'trash' air space. I was 10ish and at that age you cannot turn that big wooden fan at any great speed, the output for chaff and debris was large and the grain simply dropped out of the bottom. I say this, it could be (probably is) as wrong as possible, as I am working from 70 some yo memory. But Lord knows I just love that machine and attempt!!! Reminds me of those childhood times, which I am sure remember a lot nicer than they lived.
Very instructive video. I would probably just buy one of these online, but it's nice to know the physics of the machine works now. Thanks for posting.
Really? Where would you buy one of these from?
For the oats, increasing the rpm speed of the threshing drum might better separate the grain from the shells and chaff.
A beautiful job on the wheat threshing!!!
Super cool gadget! I'm not far enough into my homesteading journey to need this yet, but I have absorbed the information and will hopefully find myself needing one of these soon. (Soil amending is no joke, man. It's taking seemingly forever.)
hi 1incutheta, have you become a flat earther yet?
This is absolutely brilliant… I love it. Job well done
Thanks for putting it together, for the effort of figuring it out and the fine tuning.
Cheers
Thanks for the comment. I'm glad you enjoyed this.
Man your getting somewhere it looks like trial and error and with time and more use you’ll get the right system and proportions and measurement and what not down.
And build a perfect one man.
This one here is still awesome tho. I would use the hell out of this if I had grain to separate lol.
Looks like something I could do to pass time.
Mad impressive! Two things that could help:
1. Add an earlier stage with perpendicular blades to cut the wheat, so you don't get the large pieces. It might be difficult, but I imagine with a blunt enough edge and little enough force it would just break the stalks but not the grain, but maybe that's not the case.
2. Integrate the blower with the roller such that the outlet is the full width of the roller, so you have more surface area which will reduce the amount of chaff that falls through. It's already being agitated at that step, so it will have a much higher chance of being exposed to the air flow than the small channel, where the berries could block the airflow from the chaff. Or just add a second blower stage.
Very nice! I have seen a miniature version of this concept to clean other seeds for the garden.
Excellent invention, thank you for sharing!
Very innovative. From looking at hammer mills for processing hard rock gold ore, they use a very fine screen, so that the end product is very fine - liberating free mill gold. Perhaps you might have an easier time with the oats if you use a smaller screen size, but not so small they get turned into dust ofc.
What a nice simple design! Thank you for sharing
Super nice. I need one. Very hard to find a small scale thresher. Even harder to find a small scale hand or pedal powered one! Very nice job and your life just became a lot easier! Wish I was handy like that.
>
I presume you've used the old fashioned method of just beating the wheat stalks against something to break loose the wheat grains. And you can winnow thew grain by tossing it up in a stream of air to blow away the chaff.
That sounds like small scale threshing and winnowing to me. What am I missing?
@@SeattlePioneer Yes I sure have, but it gets to be a VERY large job when we are talking 2 acres of grain. I also find that method isn't very efficient and a lot of grain gets wasted. Something like this would be nice. www.google.com/search?q=treadle+powered+thresher&oq=treadle+powered+thresher&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIICAEQABgWGB4yDQgCEAAYhgMYgAQYigXSAQgzOTYwajFqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:2e856ac9,vid:MxXGS8nxZTo,st:0
That works really well, i expected to see a bit of chaff in the grain or vice versa but that all looks very clean.
Pretty simple design that seems to work quite well. Rub bars and concaves would be hard to build. Fan speed combined with geometry for gravity separation works well for separation which replaces sieves on a combine.
Good Job. I need to make something like this for my chicken feed here in AK.
Nice machine and great idea! Please get some guarding up around those pinch points 🙏
Yes. You're not the first to mention that. Thanks for looking out for me.
I bet that chaff is a fantastic fire starter
I think that you can simulate the effect of rubbing the oats in your hands if you have two rubber belts running vertically in opposite directions with an adjustable gap that you set to match the grain size. The trick may be to have a slight different in the belt speeds.
Yeah. An adjustable gap would be key, as would the ability to apply uniform pressure along the belt surface. I think only one of the belts would need to be moving. thanks for the idea. I was thinking about rollers and spinning discs to create the rubbing effect, but never belts.
@@VegetableAcademy What about vacuum beaters. Do you think something like a vacuum beater would work it loose?
@@DavidTuckerII That is a neat idea. If you built a custom sized chamber around the spinning vacuum beater and ran the grain through the chamber, you might just cause enough friction to clean off the last hulls. I don't think it would break the grains, and the spiral brush configurations on most vacuum beaters could be really helpful in moving the grain through the chamber.
@@VegetableAcademy U need a set of concaves around your cylinder that are adjustable like combines,,,ur cylinder speed needs to be increased for oats around 1100 rpm
.....or also I could see a set of two adjustable face plates ,oscillating against each other with the right gap between them; much like the pad of a palm orbiting sander does.
Nice one 👍 have you ALLSO got a mill it would be great to see the whole process from garden to the oven but anyway thanks for the video
It's an interesting first build! good stuff.
Just saw one of your shorts which led me to your channel and I'm very impressed with this! Forgive me if this has been discussed in a previous, are you making this available or just something for your personal use only? Either way this is fantastic! New subscriber from Ontario Canada!
Welcome here. At the moment, this is just a threshing machine that we will continue to use personally, but people are encouraged to take inspiration from this design to build one of their own.
very cool homebuild you have given me some ideas
Get a 6'foldable table and put it against a wall. Get a bunch of the stems and push the seeds against the wall. Grab the bunch and your wheat is ready to thresh.
For the oat you could add a downward ramp with a belt sander with a rubber belt instead of sandpaper. Rolling the oats, at a reduced speed would strip the husks off. Then into your separator.
Worth looking at the threshing design of a combine harvester where as well as centrifugal speed/force there is rubbing of the heads between 2 surfaces, a grid and a rasp bar. this adjustable gap deals with the white tips and husk on oats better.
On the dimmer switch, have you marked it for the different grains so you can turn it straight to the correct point?
Well done. Excellent. Thanks for sharing
Fascinating. Thank you.
I wonder if the flaps like you see in grocery store freezers would be better than that plastic door when you stick the heads of the stalks in the machine. Less of an opening for the grain to escape when its smacked. Do you by chance have a video series or documents on how to build/possibly redesign?
It works very well great vid Brother
Fantastic 🤩
I can't wait to see the next prototype 👌🏼
So you get clean wheat kernals, fine chaff and straw. Food, compost, mulch, bedding and even thatch. I like this apparatus.
Impressive build. ❤
Very nice design! I've been working on a cyclone design, but I like your cascade separator so much. I snip the heads of all my stocks and toss them in a hopper. I'm trying to think of a "stripper" design for my streaker oats.
So grateful your sharing this great idea. I had made up my mind I wasn't gonna bother with this crop, chaff and all. Now, I hope I'll be able/have it built soon. Curious tho, get your own patent? Many will be needing this soon. I'm one of them. Thanks again.
I'm glad you found this encouraging! The thresher definitely makes the grain harvesting more pleasant and efficient than just beating it with a stick and tossing everything in the wind to separate the chaff. I have no worries about increasing our grain production next year now, knowing I will be able to handle the threshing with ease. Please send me some photos if you end up building something similar.
I saw how it works!
Super !!!
But I would have liked to see the interior as well, to build a similar one myself.
Imagination doesn't help me much.
Are you ready to take your vegetable game to the next level?
Get started with my Free Workshop for home growers: www.vegetableacademy.com/yt-freeworkshop
id put a hood over that pulley system, just asking for something to get caught, but otherwise good stuff mate
Brilliant and ingenious 👌👌
Genius!!
And generous..
Thanks man.. 👑
What a way to also produce premium straw for thatching too😍
That's a really cool machine! Great job!
The top drum looks like a very good hand & arm shredder-chipper.
Only if you have a child-grade mentality. If you stick your hand into a ' plugged-in ' and/or ' running machine '. You deserve to get injured.
@@redstone1999screw-ups happen.
I've fed vines into a shredder and had them catch me, yanking me towards the machine. Luckily the vines broke instead of breaking something in my arm, or dragging me in. I'd been working for a bit, wasn't thinking and had got too comfortable around the machine.
It just takes a second of being distracted and off-balance. You lean against the flap to stabilize yourself and whoopsie!
@@samuelmellars7855 I had to stop an adult helper from sticking his hand into an electric wood chipper to unblock it.
His excuse was the motor was going to tripped the fuse. I said, " Unplugging the chipper was 100 % safer way to unblock the machine".
Loose clothing around equipment is another thing I see people do that begs to get someone hurt.
Love to see it!! Nice work
Very cool. Thanks for sharing.
I’d buy one of these!
The process of growing and processing wheat into flour is really very complex. This video illustrates only two of the many steps needed ---threshing and winnowing.
ALL of the steps have been massively industrialized, producing very cheap flour as an end product.
So I really can't see much of a reason to replicate the whole process on a very slight scale of production, which would inevitably require LOTS of labor.
Of course, everybody needs a hobby, but that's the only basis I can see for replicating grain and flour production as a home industry.
What would be your reason for adopting this kind of process?
I might adde that for several years an apple tree on the public right of way near where I live was neglected and all it's fruit fell on the ground each year. I hate food waste, so for several years I picked the apples, washed them, cut them up, shredded them in a food shredder then squeezed them into cider, straining out pieces of apple along the way.
That produced a hugely good apple cider, but at the cost of a LOT of labor! The lesson I learned was just how much labor goes into producing food. Producing your own flour would be FAR more labor intensive than my apple cider, I suggest.
So---- please explain why this attracts you as an activity?
Awesome video mate.. do you have plans to build this machine you could share with us? Cheers
I bet itd be possible to make one that runs totally off compressed air. Use a compressed air feed for the blower and an impeller on the beater drum drive shaft instead of a gear and pulley system. You could put an airline regulator on both air lines to adjust the force for whichever crop you are working with.
💯👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏Great job bro🤜🤛
Might be easier to get an old grain cleaner and do the proper cleaning to then. Very impressive
Seeing as you have to double handle each stem anyway, would it not work to trim the heads off each stem and let it drop into a bucket, rather than line them up, and then have a hopper you tip all the heads into so they feed into the thresher by themselves? That should work for oats then too as you handle it once above a bucket and then whatever drops off goes through the hopper.
Ingenious! What is the roller drum made from?
Do you have downloadable plans?
Here’s design plans for a similar winnowed www.realseeds.co.uk/seedcleaner.html except they exclude the thresher 😅
Nice! Imagine that machine doing acres per day? I like to eat cheap. Your state university extension folks likely can connect you with real plans and engineering. Stay safe.
This guy wins
Outstanding
Do you have plans so I could make one
Very cool! For clearing obstructions at the top of chute, would a small hinged door provide better access? A little weather stripping around the door would minimize forced air loss.
Thanks for the idea. A hinged door would definitely make it easier to access the stuck straw. However, I need that straw to still pass down the same channels because there is always wheat or oats mixed in there too that I wouldn't want to just discard. I've found that as long as I keep long pieces of straw from entering the machine in the first place, things run a lot more smoothly and I don't need to use the clean out poker all that much.
I like it . I wonder if motor was faster for thrashing for the oats.. would make a difference . More harder thrashing in the oats ..
Different size screen under the drum for legumes. Can you do something small like amaranth in this ?
Excellent, thanks.
this is amazing... do you think this would work for zinnia seeds ect....
Yeah. Zinnia seeds look like they've got a substantial size and weight to them so I think they'd work great with this type of machine. Something really tiny like poppy seeds might have a little more trouble with separating the chaff from the seeds.
This is amazing!
Have you tried this machine with buckwheat? Does it work? Thanks
That is awesome!
Would a tumbler help separate the hull from the oats after you run it through the machine?
You need an adjustable clearance friction roller to role the grain against a backstop so the chap comes off.
Just thinking for the oats. if the beater had to beat the oats through a bristle head like a broom head maybe it would remove the husk. Might help break up some of the wheat reeds too.
On a windy day, take your wheat and pour it from bucket to bucket a few times. The wind will blow the husks away and the wheat will land in the bucket.
If you fed the grains through again after all done without the beater on, would that refine it even further?
What are all thr different grains can you through in there?
How would you say the productivity rate of this machine compares to old-fashioned threshing and winnowing by hand? It might be interesting to do a "John Henry" style side-by-side comparison. Like, you could have a race where each contestant has ten bundles of wheat, and you see whether your machine is any faster than someone just flailing it and pouring from bucket to bucket in front of a fan.
You could make a second stage to put the chaff through the same process again thus removing seeds that went into the original chaff route and missed the first seed bin
I bet you could use parts from an old drill press to upgrade this. They already have a variable speed belt driven pulley system with control, capacitor, and an on/off button and switch. You could probably just take the top case and motor off a drill press as is and fit it to this thresher.
Do you sell the plans??or planning to in the future?
Would this work for chickpeas?
That’s pretty cool
Nice machine.
I’m not handy. But if I can buy the blueprint from this. I’d find someone to build it for me!!
Quite inspirational...