Corn Sheller

[bjr]

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

 

[Wood_Butcher_Dav]

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

Dave

 

[Barry 1]

One of those small chipper shredders for yard waste will work pretty good for shelling corn.The type that is like a small hammer mill.

 

[mjarrels]

I have an old single ear hand crank corn sheller... Works fine!

mark

 

[dave1949]

You can put a pulley on the old hand crank shellers, then run it with a motor.

You might look around in Amish areas.

 

[2LaneCruzer]

You can put a pulley on the old hand crank shellers, then run it with a motor.

You might look around in Amish areas.

Don't over look safety; I would be careful of the older models if you plan on refitting them. My grandfather got one of his hands in such a device and received a fairly severe injury.

 

[OldMcDonald]

bjr, I too found it impossible to source a sheller - and other people grow maize for their animals here too. I tried to make one myself, but had no plans to go on. I asked on this forum (Build it Yourself) and several others.

I ask the question "Why does it appear that nobody in the western world makes other than a drop-in single hole sheller?" There must be a good market for a machine that will shell up to a few hundred pounds of corn a day. I do not want to go to the extent of a hammer mill and the best I have thought of so far is as suggested by Barry 1, but I would prefer to have the corn shelled.

 

[dave1949]

The Corn Sheller Network. Who knew?
Minneapolis-Moline Model D Corn Sheller - cornsheller.net

As an alternative, could you find an older 2 row 1960's-70' self-propelled combine that was used with a corn head and has the sheller parts intact? Got to be some of those sitting around that you could adapt to a stationary unit. The corn head just popped the ears off the stalks with snapping rollers.

I'm not clear what magic inside did the shelling. It had something to do with changing the screens and such. But, shelled corn came out on one end, and husks and cobs out the other.

Another angle:
http://waterloo-ia.americanlisted.c...4-mounted-corn-picker-300-jesup_19687677.html

 

[OldMcDonald]

Dave, I like that video. A bit bigger than I need, but it would be great to find something similar. No chance though. It is impossible to find ANY old working machinery here. I understand the rest of southern europe is the same. An old AC 40 or 60 combine harvester would be nice too!!

Your "not clear what magic inside did the shelling" is my stumbling block in trying to make one. I have seen a few old patents, but they needed manufacturing scale engineering to produce.

 

[dave1949]

Dave, I like that video. A bit bigger than I need, but it would be great to find something similar. No chance though. It is impossible to find ANY old working machinery here. I understand the rest of southern europe is the same. An old AC 40 or 60 combine harvester would be nice too!!

Your "not clear what magic inside did the shelling" is my stumbling block in trying to make one. I have seen a few old patents, but they needed manufacturing scale engineering to produce.

Yeah, the "magic" LOL. My recollection from 40 years ago is that something on the "cylinder" and "screens" was set-up for various grains; wheat, oats, corn, soybeans, etc. I was tasked with less technically demanding duties like cutting the wound-up grass out of the snapping rolls and driving the grain truck to the elevator. :laughing:

Probably in your location old combines are not common but they have to be sitting around in numbers in the US Mid-West, some are available on tractorhouse and machinerytrader.

Inside each of those machines is a sheller that is quite efficient, designed to shell corn by the wagon load, and likely to still have repair parts available. It's a resource that I would consider tapping if I wanted to shell corn and couldn't find easier alternatives. It shouldn't be that difficult to strip off the parts not needed from the combine and build a stationary sheller that would also handle other grains to boot. You would like to have a decent motor on the combine of course to limit the costs.

If you can find the operator's manual for something like a Deere 45 or 55 combine, you could probably get a lot of insight as to how the grain separation mechanisms work, what they look like, and how they are set-up for the various grain crops.

 

[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