Building a small scale thresher

[OldMcDonald]

I have searched the Web in vain for several months to find plans to guide me in building a small thresher. I have found photographs of treadle operated ones in China and small motorised ones in India, but not enough detail to let me proceed. I realise this is an unusual request but, can anyone please help?

For info - I live in inland Portugal where the used equipment market is non-existent. Donkey power is common, and probably even best described as "normal" . Land holdings are very small (my 16 acres is considerably bigger than usual) and threshing, if done at all, is by flail. I will be growing up to 5 acres of oats, beans or lupins at anyone time, and probably a smaller acreage of corn. Cutting will be by an old fashioned bar mower with a binding attachment, with corn cobs hand picked. Not sure if you also call the result sheaves in US. I can buy metal and have my own welder (already had to make other things) but fancy bits and pieces are not really available. Treadle or pto operated (45hp NH) is OK. Probably prefer treadle and do it indoors in winter. A static baler would also be a useful thing to have!!

 

[Taylortractornut]

If there was a larger farm somewhere you could do what some Menonites use in a town a peice from here. They took a large old combine that was junked and cut off the and all the running gear and drive train. It left the main body of the combine with just the treshing and seperating gear. The input shaft on the transmission was attached to the tractors pto and they used it to thresh wheat, corn, beans and dry peas. Its in a barn and uses a long pto shaft to operate it. they Thresh all the locals wheat and corn for shares of the product and have a stationary baler in the same building to bale the wheat straw and bean left overs.

 

[OldMcDonald]

Thanks, but as I said, there is no used machinery market, purely and simply because no-one has them. I am sure that the rest of the world is not aware that the rural population of Portugal (and maybe other western European countries) just do not have the machinery and equipment that has been taken for granted since WWII in the so-called "civilised" world.

 

[Taylortractornut]

would some pictures of the insides of an old combine help with your fabrication of one. Im about to gas axe a John Deer 45 Combine and also a 205 Massey Ferguson combine. I make other things out of their parts. THey have a cylinder with teeth that engage a concave grate thet flail the beeans and wheat and oats to shell them and seperate them from the chaff.

 

[RonR]

As I recall, a JD 45 is not that large a machine (in today's standards for combines). Maybe someone has a parts manual for one of those. The parts book would show many details that might help him build his own......

Anyone got one?????????????

Ron

 

[jim_wilson]

Try looking thru www.jdparts.com - if you knew the model numbers of some of these machines you might be able to find the parts diagrams. They claim to have most of the John Deere stuff going back to 1975 online.

 

[Densleigh]

Hi,

As someone on this side of the pond and in Europe (!) my take would be to find a machinery dealer somwhere in Europe and buy what you need as scrap, the concept of manufacturing your own seems an awesome project to undertake given the need for quite complex and reasonably precise machining for some of the drive components.
There are firms in the uk that regularly export very old kit and there are great secondhand machinery dealers in Holland who you might be able to do a deal with.

I fear you would spend a considerable amount of time and effort in re-inventing the wheel so to speak and having to change things as the project evolved.

Maybe not the very best answer since we are keen to make things but if you are, as I suspect , making a living from your 16 acres (8 ha) then to quote an old adage 'time = money'

I know this won't 'solve' your request but is perhapsa more pragmatic solution.

Best of luck Densleigh

 

[OldMcDonald]

Taylortractornut, Yes they would, thanks very much. Hole sizes in screens are important, I have seen a commercial combine that suggests 3/4 inch (19mm) for corn but no others. Clearance behind screen is probably also important. Know anything about beater sizes and clearances? I can live without straw walkers.

Densleigh, Yes, I know all about scrappies and freighting here. I have contacts in various places but it is a 4 day drive from Holland, 5 and a sea trip from UK, so it is just plain uneconomic for 5 acres a year. The treadle machine on taoyan.randdf.com is just about passable if I had the dimensions, although something a bit more sophisticated is preferred. Old McDonald.

 

[OldMcDonald]

I am no further forward than I was 6 months ago. Please, anybody, anywhere, make a guess at what you would do if you absolutely must thresh some wheat for grinding so you could make bread. Somebody must have some ideas.

 

[Spiffy]

I've seen several done to match 1/2 or 1/4 scale tractors. I was going to try it myself, until I started thinking about all the hours these guys have into them; so I stick to the full size one [which I haven't had the chance to play with in a few years at that /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif].

That being said, I think you have plenty of options.

You could go wayyyy old school and flail it on a wood floor....pitch fork for the straw, sweep it all up, and fanning mill for the chaff.

More reasonable, with the mfg skills I'm assuming you have, and assuming your mosly interested in small grains, a treadle operated cylinder should be easy (but you will need to feed it slow, it takes more power than you think to keep up the RPMs for threshing). The reason I say easy is that for small grains you can make a tooth cylinder and concaves then the clearance doesn't matter quite as much [on the other hand to avoid making 100 teeth, you could likely spend some time with trial and error of clearances of a "straight cylinder"]. For small grains the hole size on the concaves will be very forgiving too. I'd start with, perhaps, a couple 12" diameter disks then connect them with a shaft (long enough to have bearings and your pully or crank). Then run about a dozen peices of 1/4" X 1" steel [or lighter, shallow 1/8 wall channel]. Make concaves as a negative of this and about 10-20% of the circumferance - don't forget to account for clearances and/or teeth; on the concaves you'll likely have the best results leaving little gap bettween the bars, but perhaps drilling plenty of 1/2 inch holes. Of course, the cylinder isn't the reason threshers are so big; it's the "separator" part [straw "walkers" to reduce the work for the sieves, a least one set of sieves, and a built in fanning mill for the chaff, but I think you allready have ways to deal with that.

Good Luck.... I want pictures!

 

[OldMcDonald]

Many, many thanks Chad. I knew somebody had to have some ideas - the half scale ones sound quite fascinating. Is there anywhere you know of where I could look up some pictures? I am not going to rush it, because the first crop I am likely to want to thresh will be oats this time next year (one of my neighbours was threshing his current crop with a flail yesterday). I have seen a combine harvester about 100 miles away where farms are bigger, two in fact, but that is a long way to bring a contractor!!

I do see the straw walkers as a problem and might opt for a hand feed idea of only letting the heads be pulled off so that the straw does not go through. I know they do that in India and China but the "feeder" person needs to be guarded against being pulled in with the heads. Should not be too difficult to arrange. I also think I will go for pto power otherwise I need help to operate it. Old McDonald.

 

[Spiffy]

Might try a google search, but most of the ones I know of were built by guys who I doubt have much interest in the internet. Also these machines are scaled replicas so the number of moving parts is probably much more than you need.

However, I did snap a couple pictures of my Case machine this weekend. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[Spiffy]

Taken from on top of the cylinder, I still think you'd be fine with just beater bars instead of toothed.

 

[Spiffy]

Close up of a concave, I think have it set with 3 concaves.

 

[Spiffy]

Wide view of concave; 32 inches wide. Thus, 32 inch machine; actually 32 X 48 [or is the separator end 44", dang absent mind...].

 

[Spiffy]

Immediately behind the cylinder is the primary sieve, if you made this long enough and wide enough [and fed slow enough], I don't think you'd need straw walkers.

 

[Spiffy]

The round thing in the sieve picure is neither the cylinder or anything related to it. I'm sure somebody is going to poke fun at me for not knowing the name, but it only helps direct the output from the cylinder, I really don't think your machine needs one. Again, I'm thinking you just need a really large [in both dimensions] primary seive to simplify much of your needs.

I'm thinking if you build the output side of the cylinder really high, wide, and long, it may make the rest simple. Then you can "funnel" the rest of the machine down into one or two smaller sieves and a fan.

Also, that 32 inch machine was considered pretty respectable in its day. A lot larger ones [and smaller ones too] were made, but this thing could keep four people pitching continously. Been over 5 years since I had it out, but I love watching city folk try to keep up with it [I don't laugh out loud to anyone though; you never know who was once a "country boy" and remembers how to slug a machine {make the cylinder bind}] /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif

 

[OldMcDonald]

Thanks again. What you say makes a lot of sense. I do believe in keeping things simple. I am not really into being a "do gooder" but some of my neighbours would have a much easier life if I could make some of these simple implements, and either lend them round (probably means me and my tractor too as donkeys have little pulling power) or let them copy it for themselves. They make such good agua-ardente (fiery water) around here from their grapes that I would be well repaid, and if they had more spare time they could make more agua-ardente. My present project - a 2 row corn drill from scrap materials ( a self set limit of €100 or about $70)and using my scarifier as a frame needs to be finished very quickly, and we are in the midst of haymaking (contractor baled some today) so time is precious and the weather is hot. Cold Portuguese beer helps a lot in the afternoons though, and I do enjoy a Guinness or two when I am finished at nights! Old McDonald.

 

[zbeckerd]

here are some pictures of a build it yourself thresher. Plans are available from
Intermidate Techonology Publications
9 King St
London WC2E 8HN England
They also have plans for many low tech rural implements.

 

[zbeckerd]

Another Picture.
Putting a box with differing screens(depending on size of grain) under it makes winnowing much easher.