"Husker" Gets Nuts Ready For Market

"Husker" Gets Nuts Ready For Market MISCELLANEOUS EQUIPMENT Miscellaneous 26-2-23 "It does the job for me, eliminating a lot of hard work and preventing small, painful wounds to the hands," says Wallace Bedell, Free Union, Va., about his home-built chestnut dehusker. Bedell sells the nuts - minus the husks - to local grocery stores and restaurants. His dehusker consists of a pair of 3-ft. long, 8-in. dia. padded drums that rotate at slightly different speeds, providing the friction to rub off the prickly husks. The drums are belt-driven by an electric motor, with gears used to modify the speed of the drums. The entire setup mounts on top of a 4-legged steel frame. To use the nut dehusker, he first places a plastic container of water under the drums. Then he uses a bucket to dribble nuts slowly between the rotating rollers. The nuts separate from the husks and sink to the bottom, while the husks float to the surface of the water and are scooped off. "It works great," says Bedell, who has about 1,000 chestnut trees on his farm. "An occasional nut might get accidentally crushed, but 99 percent of the nuts come through unharmed. In the past, I dried the nuts and then husked them by hand. Now I can start removing the husks right after harvest with almost no manual labor. I think the same idea might work for other nut crops if some modifications were made to the machine. "Some buyers want the inner shell removed, too. I can do that by making another pass and narrowing the space between the rollers." Bedell had a machinist weld the frame together and do the gear work. The drums are covered with used carpet, which in turn is covered by sheet rubber used for roofing. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Wallace Bedell, Blue Ridge Chestnut Farm, 4149 Ballards Mill Road, Free Union, Va. 22940 (ph 804 973-1101; fax 804 973-1385; E-mail: wbedell@compuserve.com).

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