GB1 Thresher

Plans to build this Thresher can be found at:
farmhack.org/to...
Other parts of grain bike project:
Intro video:
• Grain Bikes Intro
The Fanning Mill, plans and video:
farmhack.org/to...
• GB2 Fanning Mill
The Dehuller, plans and video:
farmhack.org/to...
• GB3 Dehuller
A Bike Power Take-Off to run these machines, video:
• GB4 Bike PTO

[@mark9226]

I built your thresher! It's here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/eoqqZ4Srip2Neck Thanks for plans. This year I got 77 lbs of beans from from 1/20th of an acre.

[@CathyGoes]

This looks like a great way for a farm to experiment with dry beans without sinking a bunch of capital into it. Thanks for putting it out where others can find it.

[@isaacveilleux7674]

As small scale seeds producers, your thresher made us save a lot of time and permitted us to scale up quite a bit our production. We built it last autumn and we have been using it to thresh beans, peas, soybeans, favabeans, lettuces, brassicas and so many different flowers. Everything that needs to be threshed goes in there. It doesn't work well with radish seeds and snap peas/beans, but it is still a lot better with it than without. Basically, we use the metal chain flails with everything except legumes, for which we made rubber mat flails to avoid breakerage. It worked really great. It will be very nice to have it at the beginning of the threshing season this year. Thanks a lot for making the plans available online!

[@Berkana]

Have you seen this oat thresher? kzbin.info/www/bejne/q5e3XmSchduEnrs I imagine it may be more effective when powered by a bike style drive system rather than this pump pedal system. It seems to use a series of ribs to beat against the oats rather than flails.

[@melissabrown5320]

Has anyone built a bicycle powered thresher like this anywhere in or near North Carolina? I'd love to get in touch with anyone that has.

[@Berkana]

Would it be useful to put the flails on joints that constrain their swinging to a single plane so "stator" rods can be mounted onto the walls of the chamber between the flails? This might make this tool more efficient or more effective for some threshing operations. I imagine the flails would just throw the materials around once everything picks up speed rather than beat them against something if there are no stator rods. But with with short stator rods, a long item such as a head of grain could get broken up by colliding with a stator rod. You wouldn't even need that many stator rods; a single row of stubby stator rods may do the trick.

[@lusolarone2]

We never tried stators in the threshing drum. We tried several different flail types and geometries. We stopped experimenting when the results were good--ie, 1# per minute average production. The flails do interfere a little with the staves of the drum. I think a row of wooden or metal stator "teeth" might work well. It might not even be necessary to constrain the motion of the flails; just let them whack against the stators. Please upload improvements to the tool page on www.farmhack.net ... farmhack.org/tools/bicycle-powered-thresher . Thank you!

[@lusolarone2]

That wasn't tried but might work well. It might even work to not constrain the motion of the swipples and just let the swipples and the "stator rods" interfere. As built it works very well, and often the problem is too much threshing action ( broken seeds) instead of too little.

[@truthisbetterthanfame5026]

Hah, that's sweet.

[@joshnancypeterson5287]

This is just what I've been looking for! I just harvested my first wheat crop (a tiny plot 20' x 30') and didn't want to do the 'drill with a bucket" method. Looking forward to building this. Thank you!

[@smokingjoking]

Get a H F mixer for 150 bucks and an old blower. Toss grain in with blocks of wood. Walk away and come back to clean seed. Works for almost everything. Adjust blocks and blower as need for type of seed. Very easy no waste. But it works best for wheat and oats and that type if you cut the heads from the straw. And it is set up to dump into 5 gal buckets. www.harborfreight.com/1-1-4-quarter-cubic-ft-compact-cement-mixer-91907.html

[@farmuntilthemoneyrun]

could you make a video of this? where do you set up the fan? thanks!