Hi All:
I found myself in a pinch and needed to cobble together a honey extractor quickly. So I went to the hardware store and with a few simple components made a 2 frame honey extractor for just a few dollars using a metal paint stirring device (attaches to an electric drill) some wire mesh and zip strips. What amazed me was how well this little device worked. If you only have a few supers to harvest, this may be all you need. Anyway, to see photo of how this is put together, see my blog posting on How to Make A Honey Extractor (http://www.plantertomato.com/2010/09/beekeeping-how-to-make-a-honey-extractor-for-28.html)
Looks good. Just how stiff was the wire mesh? Would it bend under pressure from the rotating frames?
Nice.
In my country, 44gallon drums and bicycle wheels are fairly standardized.
In the first build, what did you do about the grease in the bearings? Did you use honey and how well did this work?
In the second build, I think you lose momentum by having the frames so close to the drive shaft, and it can't free spin. You could improve this by fixing the cage and stirrer into the barrel and putting a driver on top, and using a driver in the drill. Speed up and then disengage the drill and it will spin itself out.
Hi All:
The wire mesh was standard stuff that you can buy at the hardware store. It's very easy to bend and held up well during extraction (Remember if you spin your extractor beyond a certain point it will destroy the wax comb. You would see this and slow the drill long beyond the point at which you would rip out the wire mesh)
With regard to the first build that used bicycle rims -- I cleaned out the grease as best as possible and then used a kind of food grade coating to cover all the metal parts. I forget what the coating is called, but its sold at bee supply stores just for the purpose of coating metal etc so it is not corroded by honey which is acidic. But to be candid, applying this coating to the spokes and other components is very difficult and its not clear to me that it 100% safe with regard to protecting you from some grease leaching into the honey. I just think build #1 is too complicated and there are simpler ways to achieve the same result. I'm going to work on this and will post plans in the future.
-PaloAltoMark
This is one hell of a home-made tool! Kudos to those brains out there!
I don;t know this guy , but this is the best/simplest homemade extractor I've come across on the net.
I can't post links yet, so go to youtube and search Homemade 2 frame Honey Extractor , it will be the top one, posted by indydigital
Very nice. Thanks for sharing your design.
Nice simple idea. I've been looking for home built designs and I like what you've done.
I wonder if a food grade grease or lubricant was used in place of? There's food grade bearings one can buy off the self. a search in your favorite engine would pull up a bit of info on either.
To eliminate the need for coatings couldn't SS wire be used?
That is pretty cool.