Trommel

I built this about 30 years ago, just recently re-screened it with 1/2" X 1" welded wire, it did have 1/4" hardware cloth, I will slip different sized screen cylinders into it for smaller screening.

3/4" conduit bent in a circle, most of the rest of it is used cooler parts, shaft cut into 4 pieces, welded to pipe I had laying around, they ride in standard pillow blocks, used 1/2hp motor with the high speed winding burned out, and the gears and chains are standard tractor supply items. I used radiator hose on the pipe shaft for traction. Probably have less than $50.00 invested, oh and that is my compost pile, just screened some 4 year old horse manure, I should have taken a picture of the shhh pit where it resides for the 1st year.

Rancher

 

That's a nice build. The design is so good I'm jealous. So I saved the pic and made some notes.
(I want onena doze!)

 

Nice trommel. Nice hat. Nice beard. Nice country. I'm jealous.

 

Hey you live in AZ, it's all desert and no water or trees...

 

If you have questions, just ask. The first design was on 4X4's set up on cinder block. Basically you have to have both axles turning for drive friction, and rubber where the conduit meets the axles, sprocket ratios were just a SWAG, the mesh is just pop riveted to the conduit using fender washers.

Rancher

 

@azrancher
Excellent design and execution building it!

Back home a bud had horses and he used sawdust from the slab wood mill. After it cooked, it was great fertilizer.

 

I guess I should have mentioned it's not just manure, the wife uses shavings for bedding (we used straw as a kid), and it also has some bermuda hay mixed in, pretty much after 4 years it's dark, can't tell what it used to be, what you can see in the picture is on it's second year.
Rancher

 

@azrancher
What I used to get was horse manure mixed with sawdust. Some sawmills cut slab wood that is used to built palettes. It took two years for it to break down; after that the garden was fantastic. My front tine tiller would submerge to the tine guard, LOL.

When I was a kid, we had lots of chickens in 2 10x20 coops. One of my chores was to scrape their manure and dump it in a rain barrel. No matter how slow I added the manure to the barrel, the crust on top would break and the aroma was nasty. Even worse was getting a bucket of it and ladling it around the vegetables. As chicken manure has so much nitrogen, it will burn the plants. The smell was worse than dumping it into the barrel.
We also got pig manure which is even worse..

 

No questions yet, but I am learning lots by following this thread. Great posts. This is something I hadn't considered. Thanks for sharing.

 

I am thinking Gold Rush kind of trommel.