Corn Sheller

[dmccarty]

This past winter, I was looking at growing peanuts since we eat pounds of them, they appear easy to grow, and produce quite a bit of calories per area. The problem I could not solve was how to shell hundreds of pounds of peanuts. I could find expensive made in China peanut shellers and a home built device but it that looked problematic. Previous generations of the wife's family raised huge amounts of peanuts, owned a retail outlet and were part of a large peanut co-op. Her grandfather showed me the old peanut sheller they used, and there was not much to the device, but it has long since disappeared.

Never did find a good solution.

Later,
Dan

 

[forgeblast]

Peanut Power: Building A Better Sheller - Popular Mechanics and
How A Promise Led To Innovation: A Peanut Sheller : NPR describe the following link which is how to build it.
Universal Nut Sheller (with forms)
you could go with the bike version
www.mit.edu/~ideas/past proposals/peanut.pdf‎

 

[sjerden]

You can usually hook a electric motor and a belt to drive those ole hand-crank versions. I have an old JD corn sheller that has a geared wheel to hook a drive chain to.

Does it have to be electric, 'FleeBay' has old hand crank versions that may work.

Dave

 

[charlz]

I've been doing a search for a electric Corn sheller with dismal results. I live in a neighborhood were the families all raise Maize. It's use mostly for animal feed. Progressively the quantity has increase to the point that shelling the corn by hand is unacceptable. I was hoping to find a old John Deere No. 43 sheller but with the steel scrape price being high there's no used implement inventory to be had, as it's all being scraped. I've attached a pdf file to show what I think may work. The Chinese company states they only ship five units minimum. Is there any one out there that's ever seen or used a machine like this. Or does knows of a vendor here in the USA that inventories these units. Thank you bjr

'By hand' do you mean with something like a Blackhawk hand crank unit or a unit like this one that used to run off a hit and miss engine but still required you to feed them one at a time:

Antique Corn Sheller with Hit and Miss Engine - YouTube

This one gives you a quick look inside a John Deere 43:

John Deere 43 Corn Sheller - YouTube

 

[charlz]

Another area is seed cleaning, you either try to find an old, large unit for cheap but is really too big for what you want or pay big $$$ for an 'office' model.

 

[charlz]

Here is another 43 in action and at the end a old hand crank unit. He steps back and forth across the running PTO a few times..... not exactly the safest thing to do. Watching both the units in action gives you an idea of the process, separate the corn and cob, screen the corn to get rid of dust and chaff and move each into their own container/pile.

In the 43 the drum thrashes it against a screen, corn and chaff drop through, the cob and husk are moved to one end and elevated out. Corn and chaff drop onto a screen small enough the corn doesn't go through and the chaff is moved out with a fan.

In the old unit I suspect the internals are similar to a Blackhawk type sheller where the cob is moved against a spinning disk of 'nubs' which remove the corn seed. Once the cob is cleaned off it is small enough to drop out the bottom as seen here: Hand Crank Corn Sheller - YouTube then the mix is ran across the screen so the corn and chaff drop through and the cob moves on down the line. A seed cleaner would be needed later to clean the chaff from the corn.

Simple enough in theory but would take some work to build either one.

 

[OldMcDonald]

Thanks for all those links. All very interesting and informative. BUT,

Simple enough in theory but would take some work to build either one.

Why is there always a but when we decide to try to make something extra useful?

I have watched numerous YouTube videos many times and there always seems to be a fair bit of corn escaping the collection boxes on smaller models. Is this something that has to accepted? I know from when I used to combine large acreages of small grains that there is some waste out of the back of combine harvesters too (sometimes a lot if incorrectly set up) but the quantity "lost" in small scale shelling seems high. On the other hand, a big sheet surrounding the collection box would making picking up that grain not too difficult, so maybe it is not such a big deal if time and effort are saved.

 

[jinman]

Call me stupid, but I'd have to try my old cement mixer with a few ears and a couple of bricks thrown in there to knock the corn off the ears. I'm just enough of a redneck homeboy to give that a try. With dry corn, it seems to me that shucking would be the big job. A pair of good gloves, a #2 wash tub, and a pile of dried shucked corn seems like a good way to shell a medium amount of corn. I might change my mind long before the hundred bushel mark though.

 

[dmccarty]

Peanut Power: Building A Better Sheller - Popular Mechanics and
How A Promise Led To Innovation: A Peanut Sheller : NPR describe the following link which is how to build it.
Universal Nut Sheller (with forms)
you could go with the bike version
www.mit.edu/~ideas/past proposals/peanut.pdf‎

I researched that peanut sheller and there were problems with it. It sounds good but there were problems adjusting the device to shell correctly and consistently, people were getting concrete dust in the peanuts, they would break down and were slow to work. This thing was faster than shelling by hand but that was about all it was good for.

The sheller on the wife's family farm looked like thin table about 8 feet long with a motor. Unfortunately it is now gone. It was in poor shape when I saw the sheller and I did not think to exam it closely when the wife's grandfather was showing it too me. Which makes me think to go try a new search for extension office websites for sheller plans. I wonder if the sheller they built was from plans at the NC extension office.....

Later,
Dan

 

[charlz]

A pair of good gloves, a #2 wash tub, and a pile of dried shucked corn seems like a good way to shell a medium amount of corn. I might change my mind long before the hundred bushel mark though.

I did that one year with some left over sweet corn that I had, figured I'd use it for winter bird feed. Comes off fairly easy when well dried but yeah, you don't want to do much that way if you don't have to. I found throwing it out cob and all works fine for quail, they are more then eager to pick it off themselves