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High Capacity Pea Sheller
Henry McCullough of Pittsview, Ala., raises 1 1/2 acres of peas and gets them shucked in no time with a pea sheller he made about 5 years ago. He pours in two 5-gal. buckets of peas at a time and within 2 to 3 min., hulled peas roll out into a bucket, ready to freeze or give to friends.
  McCullough, 67, is a heat and air conditioning worker by trade. He got the idea for his sheller after seeing another home-built unit.
  McCullough first made a 24 by 36-in. chicken wire drum with a 12 by 36-in., 18 gauge stainless steel access door suspended horizontally above it. They mount inside a 48 by 30 by 50-in. box with an oak frame covered by 3/4-in. plywood and a hinged door at the top. The drum is turned by a 1/6 hp gear reduction motor that McCullough salvaged from a job.
  The inside of the cage has five sets of three 1 by 1/4 by 9-in. beater bars welded 6 in. apart to a 1-in. stainless steel shaft supported by two 1-in. pillow block and 1-in. surface bearings and turned by a 3/4 hp motor.
  McCullough experimented with getting the right gear reduction with pulleys on both motors to get the right speed.
  "The first time I ran it I found out the rpm's were too fast and cracking peas, so I slowed it down with a larger pulley on it," McCullough says. He used 14-in. and 4-in. pulleys to get the right gear reduction on the 3/4 hp motor.
  After that it worked perfectly. He fills the drum with peas, turns on the motors, and the beaters crack the hulls and the shelled peas fall through the chicken wire and down a 1/4-in. screen into a bucket. McCullough runs a fan next to the screen to blow off debris. When the peas are all hulled, he positions the drum so he can open the cage secured by three window latches and drop the hulls into a hull box that pulls out to empty.
  "It's best to pick your peas and air dry them for 24 hrs. They shell better," McCullough says, adding the peas should be fully mature at the green stage before they are picked.
  Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Henry McCullough, 5258 Hwy. 431, Pittsview, Ala. 36871 (ph 334 855-9382).


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2011 - Volume #35, Issue #4