Machine For Sweeping Up Walnuts

Machine For Sweeping Up Walnuts MISCELLANEOUS EQUIPMENT Miscellaneous 28-4-41 I've come up with a one-of-a-kind machine for sweeping up walnuts and æfuzz balls' from sweet gum trees. I use my garden tractor or 4-wheeler to pull the 3-ft. wide machine. It consists of a rotating cylinder equipped with four paddle wheels and four rows of 2-in. long teeth. A 5 hp gas engine belt-drives a shaft that chain-drives the cylinder at about 2,500 rpm's. As the machine is pulled forward, the cylinder brushes the walnuts back into a hopper, which is covered by a flat metal retainer screen to keep the nuts from bouncing out. The screen is hinged at one end. Once the hopper is about one third full, I pull back on a lever that tilts the hopper back and raises the endgate at the same time to dump the nuts out. I can use one crank to adjust the height of the cylinder, and another crank to raise or lower the wheels. At first I tried using paddle wheels without teeth, but it didn't work very good because it put a lot of grass in the hopper. Then I welded teeth onto a metal strip and bolted it to the paddle wheels. I generally run the teeth so they comb through the grass and flip the nuts into the hopper. A swinging hitch allows the machine to follow off to the side of the towing tractor. (Roger Foster, Rt. 1, Box 108, Tower Hill, Ill. 62571 ph 217 567-3417)

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