Building a Thresher from a Fanning Mill.

This one? My garden tractor mower will be better.
I probably need a gas engine but a small one to power my lifting belt.
I will not have someone walking along to pull those off and I do not want to stop and tie every one.
I still want to see old time binder drawings.
Can you tell me if there are any in the book I ordered?

yep. whaddia u think? I see the bat reel being needed to push that cut PAST the sickle.

I don't know about that. My AC B-210 garden tractor will be moving faster than those oxen are. Once I get it all sharpened up that is,,,,
Can you tell me if the book I ordered from your recommendation has grain reaper or Grain Binder drawings in it?

3 reaper and 6 binder

WOW, Now I really what that book to get here fast.
Thank you F B Bill.

I have a sneaky feeling your going to be disappointed. There drawings alright, but they've been takin from newspapers in the 1880s and 90s of what would be pictures in the 1900s.

Well I just might have to go take a long look at the grain binder that I know about.

Okay, FB Bill.
The book arrived here yesterday.
And I am very disappointed. Just why did you recommend it?
I need exploded diagrams not just a bunch of ads from different old catalogs and magazines.

Sorry it wasn't what you wanted.

Ive got so many books that, long ago, I had to take them from being stacked in shelves on their bottoms to being laid on top of each other. Ive got 2 such stacks both around 30in high. Another a foot high on top a stack of books still in the case as they should be. That don't count a 3ft high stack of farm mags like Farm Collector, and another, and Lehmans catalogs, chicken catalogs, ect. Another foot of Antique Power mags.

WOW, I only have 2500 books and 3000 magazines here.
Please do sort through those little stacks and find one with what I need.

Tho I aint gonna lok through them, sorry, and I aint gonna count them lol

Well I have decided to do it almost the same as I first dreamed up but with a few additions like the furnace blower.
Not the huge commercial antique blower that I have but just one right out of a furnace. I have several of this type.

So the plans for the thresher is all set now on to the harvesting of the grains.
Rigging some kind of elevating platform onto my sickle bar mower that will put the grain, straw and all into a pulled little trailer.
I am thinking about large crates to put on the trailer so just one trailer but fill one crate and then another.

A small lawn mower or tiller engine to power an old snowmobile track to lift the grain to the crates.
Instead of my garden tractor mounted and powered four foot sickle bar mower I will have to do a test to see if my 12 HP garden tractor can use my very old John Deere #2 sickle bar mower. That one is wheel powered but if two horses could pull it why not a 12 HP Garden Tractor.

If ya look long enough ya find the way to do it.
This is what I will start with. The first of two in this video.
Then I will scale it up to a larger version of it with a mesh bottom so the grain will drop out into a wooden box.

Well I can say I had a dream two nights ago.
In my dream I was using a threshing machine I had built.
Why I do not know,,,
The 55 gallon drum on powered by my huge old drill will be way better than this one but here it is,,

I was standing next to a wooden box that was mounted on legs. the bottom of the box was a mesh and the box was about four feet wide and ten feet long.
There was a large metal funnel under the box to collect the grain and move it to one end.
Along both sides there was a metal edge with rollers riding on them.
The rollers were on the frame holding the silly part of this thresher.
The frame held two rototillers with the handles removed and the tines were replaced with pieces of chain.

I filled the box with straw with the grain heads full then I started those two tillers and pushed them along the box so all of the grain was threshed out.

Okay forget the straw and grain that would be flying all over.
In my dream it worked perfectly.
I believe I will stick with the 55 gallon drum with the lid to close and the mesh bottom.

Merry Christmas Folks.
Yesterday I picked up a piece of chain that was last used years ago to chain break a husky that just knew he could break any dog chain or collar.
I remember we padlocked the chain to the doghouse and again around his neck. Two years later I put a collar on him and a 20 foot long piece of 5/16" braided nylon rope and he would come to the end of it and sit down.
That would have been 1978 when it was last used.

It is eight feet long and that will make a total of eight 12 inch long flails inside my 55 gallon drum thresher. In the video where the guy is using a drill motor and a five gallon bucket he has to move it up and down and swing it around side to side. The power of my large drill will let me do it easier with a lot more chains.

I really thought I had described my plan better for my 55 gallon drum thresher here.

I will hang my old very large drill from a cord that will go up to a pulley, over to another one then down to a weight approximately equal to the drill with the drum head and the steel rod with eight 12" long pieces of chain on it.
The steel drum will have a steel plate bolted to two sides with a steel rod welded to it. Those rods will be in bearings or bushings so the drum with the drill raised can be tipped to dump out the straw.
It will be good to have the bottom up off the floor so the grain can drop out of the mesh bottom into a tray to be winnowed later.
On the side opposite the operator will be a not too large furnace blower to help move the grain out of the barrel.
I only paid five bucks for that huge drill. It came with a drill press unit that it mounts in to make it a drill press. It has a very large chuck and again everything I will need is all laying around here. Maybe not the mesh size I will need but I do have a nephew in a position to get me the very best deals on any metal.

Well the snow is but gone so I went down into my little valley and inside a Chevy Astro van I checked out that overgrown drill motor.
The large drill bit chuck I have for my milling machine will go to 5/8"
The chuck on that drill motor goes to 3/4".
No problem at all because I was figuring to use a 1/2" steel rod to weld the pieces of chain to.

Yesterday I was thinking about what to use for that half inch rod to spin with the drill motor and I went downstairs and what jumped out at me but a four and a half foot long piece of 1/2" threaded rod.
I was choosing half inch because that is the largest size I could spread out links of the old chain I am going to use.
Now I don't even have to weld the pieces of chain to the rod because I already do have a box of half inch nuts laying around doing nothing.

This will be a very easy fun build when I get to where I will need it.