Pellet heads!! What's up today?

I planted a humming bird feeder post this afternoon,now to get a couple more to go with it.

 

Had to clean stove today,used the new smaller vac,worked just fine,no dust in house.Slightly less vac power,yet plenty of blower power to blow out flue.Happy.

 

BEAR....
We have several Hummer feeders around the yard...... absolutely marvelous to watch these little creatures whizzzzzing around.

Had one land on my shoulder last summer, was way cool.

 

Yesterday I got after the mods on the Munchy hopper.

From the gittgo we had to place a piece of wood over the very front of the hopper to stop the occasional half shell from flying out (Happens often and makes a mess on the slab.

Decided to add a piece of sheet metal to that area and just weld it in.

Pouring in the shells using a large plastic scoop would also see a few half shells fall off the edge of the scoop and make it to the concrete as well, so decided on a 2 inch wide sloped flange around the opening to hopefully stop this as well.

Cut and fit all the pieces last night and then removed the hopper from the machine to make welding easier without getting splatter all over the machine.

Some pics of the materials mocked up.

This morning I will get after the welding job..

These mods should make feeding the machine easier as well as keeping the work area cleaner.

Weather is looking good for Thursday.... hopefully we can run Munchy and get more materials done.


I'm thinking that after the current mods are done today and the machine run again Thurs. that it will be PAINT TIME

A couple rattle cans of paint and Munchy should look good....

 

I generally have 3 hummer feeders going during the summer we have just a few, always fighting over food they be. Pileated Woodies and Orioles hang out here as well.

 

friday night not lookin good buddy.....better go check the hatch before they all get washed away

 

Ripped MUNCHY apart and added the modified top and welded in the belt guard bolts.
Cleaned off the anti splatter spray goop and put the beast back together.

OWG.... it works sweet....

The hopper flange reduced the spillage by over 90%..
Definitely a lot less stuff to sweep off the slab after a session..

Had one jam from a chunk of wood (Piece of tree limb most likely)
Here is a video


A few more pix

AS far as I am concerned this bad boy is ready for the paint job.

Get some warm dry weather and I will gitterdone.

Need to fully disassemble the machine and clean it well with a good grease/oil remover and then shoot it.

In the mean time this bad boy can "Do it's job"

 

Now you can work on a continuous feed system!

 

Hump Day

 

A small auger feed from the barrel with the half shells would be sweeeeeeeeet..
Just takesis all.
The Munch cost me about $675 ...not counting my machine time, electricity to run the lathe, mill, welder...

But we now have a good solution for what seems like it's going to be a long term problem.

We have 36 barrels of stove ready material in the out building.
We have about 35 empty barrels as well.

I would love to add to the equipment, but other things need to take precedence at this time.
I need to dig a ditch and run a new power feed line to my well house.... about 250 feet.

 

This should do nicely:

 

Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeet.

That sucker likely can move several hundred tons per hour...

A bit of overkill eh ????

If I could find a small auger that could handle 700 pounds per hour... I could get enthused...

Just $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ is all

I really was happy with the way we used to do it....

Dip it from the barrel into the screen bucket and shake it to be sure there were no STICKS and good to go...

All the extra work was not on my bucket list.....

 

You could apply the mover sucker system to this situation.

 

Not sure... everything takes $$$ to modify or adapt.

Ahhh well....such is life

 

At the present time I am very very happy to have what we have...AND THAT IT WORKS WELL....

 

Almost 56 here today, sun, aired house out a bit, but a bit chance of rain coming in. But nice day, and cat outside loving life.

 

Mine did that yesterday with 60-65 deg temps and sun. Today its back inside-chilly, raw and misty

 

Pellets are done. Oil comes on briefly now and then. Have four bags left for next year.

 

Got the p43 rocking the Man Cave now , this week only 2.5 bags burned , 2 ton + for next year my softwood collection .