I probably posted a YouTube last year, but here's an updated video shot in 2018 at "Thee Olde Time Farm Show", in Bourbonnais, IL.

This 1919 Ottawa, truck-mounted sheller was originally owned by the landlord of our 2 friends (Mark & Andy) that restored it. It is now owned by that landlord's son, Ron Sauberli. He allowed it to be restored & used so the public can see "how it was".

I'm guessing there's a few Ag-Talkers that haven't been involved in shelling corn. Though I know many of you call that process "shelling" when a self-propelled combine travels thru a field harvesting ear corn & shelling it off the cob. But, to us, shelling was this kind of machine. Our family was in the custom shelling business "back in the day" also. 98% of our shelling was out of cribs, but occasionally we'd set up & shell "out of the field" from a wagon, as is being done in this video. Only the short incline drag is used in this case. Back in our day of field shelling, there weren't gravity box (aka "slant-box") wagons invented yet, so we had to also set up the hoist & speed jack on the end rows.

But back to this sheller. Mark & Andy did a great job getting this old wooden machine going again. Notice the amount of flat belts & malleable iron chains. No v-belts or roller chains. The old Continental 6 runs like a top, though it took a lot of work by Mark & Andy to get the carb & mag up to par. 

If you shelled back in the day, you probably think there's a lot of shelled corn coming out of the wagon. That's just because of the small amount of ear corn that's picked & wagon storage. There's 0 cribbed corn that I know of within 100 miles any more. But they pick some corn annually & put it in wagons for the winter until this farm show. I assure you most of the guys in this video have spent their due time on the end of a scoop shovel, but this was a fun day for the public to view.

Questions & comments are welcomed. Below is link to 2018 YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlQ4kcRB8og

The sheller is set up in the background of the parade tractor photo below:

(Parade group 1 enh 8x10 (full).jpg)

Parade group 1 enh 8x10 (full).jpg (236KB - 99 downloads)