2014 - Volume #38, Issue #3, Page #07
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"Made-It-Myself" Pea Sheller
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The former teacher of agriculture raised a pea patch that was 200 yards long on his Cecil Lake, B.C. farm. They took a long time to pick, so he didn’t want to spend hours shucking them, too. He picked up an extension bulletin with plans for a small sheller, and made a wooden unit that did about a gallon at a time. Then he decided to supersize it with the help of his students.
“My big one does 3 gal. of peas in 2 or 3 minutes,” Sones says.
A 1/4-hp. motor with 1/2-in. V-belts turns a 34-in. paddle assembly made with six 4 by 6-in. beveled 1/2-in. fir plywood paddles. The assembly is inside a 3-ft. long drum with a frame covered in 1/2-in. hardware cloth (wire mesh). The drum spins over a 2 by 4-ft. plywood drawer with a 2-in. hole in one corner.
He dumps peas in through a door on a section of the drum, levels them out, and turns on the motor. The drum rotates slowly with belts and pulleys, and when the peas spin to the top, they fall on the fast moving paddles and hit against the screen, which opens the pods. The shelled peas fall through the screen into the drawer.
“Some broken pod pieces fall into the drawer, too,” Sones says.
He pulls out the drawer, which has a cover over the hole, and rolls it back and forth so the broken pods stick to the bottom. Then, he opens up the hole, slopes the drawer and vibrates it so shucked peas roll over the pods and fall through the hole into a container. He rotates the drum to open the door at the bottom and dumps the pods, cleans up the drawer, and is ready for another batch.
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Barrie Sones, P.O. Box 176, Cecil Lake, B.C., Canada V0C 1G0 (ph 250 785-3112).
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