Threshers, pedal powered

Threshing is a key part of agriculture that involves removing the seeds or grain from plants (for example rice or wheat) from the plant stalk. In the case of small farms, threshing is done by beating or crushing the grain by hand or foot, and requires a large amount of hard physical labour. A simple thresher with a crank can be used to make this work much easier for the farmer. In most cases it takes two people to work these: one person to turn the crank and the other to feed the grain through the machine. These threshers can be built using simple materials and can improve the efficiency of grain threshing. They can also be built with pedals, or be attached to a bicycle, so that the person operating it can simply pedal to reduce the work even more and make threshing faster.

Threshers can be made in a number of ways using simple tools, and can be used in the harvesting of maize/corn, rice, wheat, sorghum, pearl millet, and any other grain or seed that must be separated from a stalk. The attachment of a thresher to a pedal-system can be built with basic materials. Two versions are the pedal-powered thresher which is built as one piece and the attachment to a bicycle for a regular thresher with a crank. Pedal-powered threshers have been suggested or made available to farming communities by governmental or non-governmental organizations. It should be remembered that there are some disadvantages to these threshers and their impact in the specific region should be researched before being suggested.

Thresher are many different designs for threshers and they can be made from wood or metal. The shape of the thresher can vary, but it must include some main parts:

An addition that can be built to make a thresher more efficient is to make it pedal-powered. This adds two more parts:

The pedal-powered thresher developed by the Maya Pedal Project provides a good example of a built-in pedal system to a thresher/mill.

An attachment to a regular bicycle can be built to allow the bike to be used as the seat, pedals, chain and sprocket of the thresher. The bicycle must be on a stand so that the back wheel is raised off the ground. Plans have been developed to build the attachment and the wheel-stand out of pieces of metal, including a large wheel that can be screwed to the crank section of the thresher (see External links). A drill will be required to make this as well.

Advantages of the thresher include less physical labour and more efficiency (amount of grain thresher per amount of time). Less seed breakage is also a benefit of using a thresher as opposed to stomping or beating grains. However, more breakage can occur it is not used properly.

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Wikipedia