Lloyd

The only trick is to make sure that the wire for the 18" which will be the width is on the inside. This gives you a washboard effect for mashing material through the screen.

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I used two 42 inch long 1x4s and two 16 inch 1x4s, with the shorter ones inside the longer ones. It's a good size for a wheelbarrow, but I usually just use it directly where I want the compost.

My wife showed me the plans in a Martha Stewart magazine. They used to be available online, but they redesigned the website and the plans don't seem to be there anymore.

I like Bill's wheelbarrow handle design. I think those handles would be better to hold.

Me, I don't sift.

Whilst working my garden bed after harvest was over I found a large chunk of compost in the soil, about the size of a muskmelon. The roots of a tomato plant had found that hunk of compost and totally invaded it.

I have a screen made with hardware cloth that I used to screen stones out of soil but I can't be bothered to sift compost. In the long run I don't think breaking up the compost and sifting it makes any difference to the fertility of the soil.

Lloyd

(The wheelbarrow belongs to the friend who made the sifter. He lives next door, has 3 wheelbarrows. When I need to use one, I just go get it. Very handy to have him as a neighbor/best friend.)

Karen

I dump a couple of shovel fulls onto the screen, shake back and forth over the can; whatever doesn't go through gets dumped into the new pile. Worms mostly fall right through which is fine with me, they can munch in the can while I'm deciding. If they don't fall through they go into the new pile as well.

Man, I wish I'd thought of handles though. Now I can't wait for this one to fall apart so I can build a new one :-)

Val

When I built them, I positioned my CP bins so that the cart would fit between them, making forking onto the sifter real easy. The frame of the screen fits snugly onto the sides of the cart so no slipping while screening. What's really nice is I can sift a whole 4x4 bin (chunks go into new pile) into the cart and then simple to either shovel into bins for winter or (if summer sift) roll the cart right over to the beds. And since the card it high enough, no bending or stooping during sifting. Way easy on my back...
Kris

There was a set of three dish-type sifters from England that sold for thirty something bucks.

I sandwich two together and set them over a plastic bin and dump compost on top of it. Give it a little shake, and it's sifted!

I have very limited space, and don't see the value (for my own situation) in buying more stuff, when the stuff I have already can be used in more than one way.

I even forwarded a picture of it to my mom, sighing that I wish I were handy and could build something like this. She boasted that with the right tools, she could do it. So I replied that I knew what I would be getting her for Christmas and what she would be doing when she came to visit for the holidays.

So, Lloyd, what tools do you recommend, lol?

:)
Dee

P.S. I, in the meantime, have the exact same set-up as pickldpepprz, so I wouldn't mind a better set-up too!

All I did was take 4 skinny boards about 2 feet long, bought some small L brackets from the hardware store and screwed them into the boards to form a square. Then take a staple gun and staple the hardware cloth onto the back of the square.

Take a look at Bill's though because the handle idea is a good one, much better for shaking and....yes....we all wish we had Lloyds set up :-)

Val

Sifting was fast, and the results were chunky, but not overly so. I felt the sifted compost was just right with this size mesh.

Just a thought. :-D

They are VERY efficient, and you can stand up most of the time.

Well done.

Lloyd

I think you just gave me the answer for getting the coarse wood chips out of the purchased soil that we didn't know were there until after the beds had been filled.

I can scrape the soil to one end, set the crate down in the other, and sift out the unwanted chips without having to shovel everything out and back in again.

Probably a little small for doing a big pile, but for cleaning a bed its just what I needed. :-D

Once I find a bicycle that's being given away, I'll make one of the trommel sifters, using the pedals as a handle.

I was recently given a pile of finished compost that had rocks and other unwanted debris in it. I used the milk crate to sift the desired material right into the new bed and the undesirable got tossed onto the pet cemetery cum rock pile.

Sifting works best when crate is filled about 1/2 full, then shaken alternately and vigorously side to side. This action really gets the material rolling left & right in the crate. Up and down, back and forth, and twisting actions weren't nearly as effective.

It was exactly what I needed for the purpose. :-)

Mine is just larger than my wheelbarrow, and sits there for batch sifting. I also have a riddle for finer screening for pots and seed starting.

Catherine

We used it to screen the windrow from the fall of 2007, We used tarps to lay over the screened compost and let the overs fall onto the tarp to hold it down. Once the area under the screener was filled we pulled the screener back about 5 feet, unrolled some more tarp and kept going. Took a couple of hours to do it all.

Lloyd