E-Mail 'The $100 Homestead Grain Winnower - Part 2, by PapaP' To A Friend

Email a copy of 'The $100 Homestead Grain Winnower - Part 2, by PapaP' to a friend

* Required Field






Separate multiple entries with a comma. Maximum 5 entries.



Separate multiple entries with a comma. Maximum 5 entries.


E-Mail Image Verification

Loading ... Loading ...

6 Comments

  1. Excellent work friend although until the very end when you tested-explained the design I was wondering how it worked.

    Now we need a thresher to knock off the grain from the stalk. I’ve used the 5 gallon bucket with a drill-bolt-locking nut-section of dog chain as a whip thresher. Very dusty and had on the drill as it sucks that chaff into the cooling of the drill.

    Maybe a section of 3/8 inch rod threaded at the working end for the dog chain whip and a sort of a 5 gallon lid shield along with bracing to keep it under control might work better. The original system works with small loads using sort cut straw or simply twists up into a mess.

    Thoughts? I hate to reinvent the wheel when someone else has a viable working device like this articles grain winnower.

  2. Hey PapaP, thank you for this wonderful article, it was SO helpful. Excellent photos also. This baby went straight to the printer for future reference.

    I’ve been wondering about a grain winnower for some time but hadn’t done any searches yet since I haven’t planted grain until this year. But for years now, I’ve been saving my own seed and growing lots of herbs for cooking and for teas. I have a series of screens I use for cleaning both seeds and herbs, but they are less than satisfactory. For teas, it’s not relevant if there are small stems in the final product. But for herbs, it’s a huge problem if there are stems in oregano and basil for example. Oregano stems are very fine and pointy and downright annoying when you come across them in omelets and other dishes where they don’t cook long enough to soften up. So I’ve been wondering for a couple of years how to separate those out and haven’t come up with a solution until you wrote this article. I think the whole concept of a long tube is the solution for both seed separating and removing small stems from herbs. Of course, it would take different sized blowers and tube diameters but that’s all doable, it’s the concept that’s so ingenious. With oregano, the stems are small and needlelike so they wouldn’t float on the air very well while the leaves would. (The airflow would have to be just perfect.) So, the usable product would actually be coming out the top of the tube instead of the bottom. A series of 90’s could be added to the top of the tube so the oregano is being blown out in a downward direction while the stems are falling out the bottom of the tube. Just reverse of how the wheat is being separated.

    I’ve used screens, followed by box fans and blow dryers for winnowing seeds I save but those too are less than satisfactory and I end up losing more seed than I like. A tube setup like you’ve built could be modified for seeds, using a much smaller blower motor, or at least one that had a very adjustable air flow.

    There’s a lot to think about here as far as other applications go.

    Thanks again for sharing! 🙂

  3. Thank you for this. I have been thinking about small scale grain growing for some time. The lack of threshing and winnowing equipment has been the stumbling block. I think threshing manually could be done with help. But the thought of throwing dirty grain up in the air on a windy day never seemed very practical on a small property.

  4. Would a winnower be basically the same thing as a “fanning mill” or “seed cleaner”? Out in the shed I have an old hand cranked wooden one that came out of an old feed mill, and I was curious if it would do the same thing.

    Also, just in case someone needs to buy a blower, there is a company, Surplus Center, that usually has all kinds of goodies like blowers, controls, hydraulic parts, etc, for very good prices. It might be worth checking them out if you need to buy a blower. They have a website and also send out paper catalogs.

  5. Thank you all for you kind comments. I wanted to give back something to the Survivalblog community for all the good articles that you and others have posted.

    @wwes: A fanning mill or seed cleaner would be a better way to clean grain. They have a larger capacity. But these are antiques for the most part and hard to find and since mostly made of wood they would rot away if not stored undercover.

    Our farm had a fanning mill that sat in the barn unused as far back as I can remember. It belonged to my grandpa who probably used it to clean oats of weed seeds, etc. before planting in the spring. It was sold on a farm auction when my dad retired in 1978.

Comments are closed.