Sift-O-Matic 58EZ-300 Rock Separation Machine
The Sift-O-Matic 58EZ-300 is ready to eat dirt
As my mind comes back online after 4 months of home improvement projects, I have a little time to post some of the contraptions I've built.
We have a great deal of rocks in our yard, probably dinosaur droppings from long ago. Most people go to the store and buy some fresh soil in a bag for gardening, but I was determined to reuse what I had on site.
I kind of shot from the hip on this project. Plans like this are usually the best because you don't have to sit and draw up blueprints, which take the fun out for me. I'm like Tim the Tool Man Taylor, but I do learn from mistakes and become a better craftsman for it.
At first I was thinking I could just carry the tray around the yard and shake out the dirt, but reality soon took a toll once I realized how heavy this would be. The design was soon converted to fit into a framework where a wheel barrel could drive under it.
It's great exercise and a good way to recycle soil in your yard
The pictures pretty much tell the story here. It's like a rowing machine that city people pay $1,000 for. The motion you make is much like a push up or lifting weights. Just grab the side and shove back and forth. I may actually be tough enough to survive a fight if I keep this up.
The whole contraption was built from scrap wood the previous owner left in the barn. The one thing I wish I had done is build the tracks out of plastic or steal pipe. I could probably retrofit some pipe in which would reduce friction. I supposed wheels would also be a grand idea, but the thing needs to be super tough, and cheap wheels may break. I'll have to look around.
Another idea I had was to take old HVAC pipe and snip sheets off to make the tracks more slippery. I did some study on soil and found out an interesting fact. There are 3 types of soil, clay, sand and loam. Clay is so tiny that it balls into clumps. This is the stuff we hate. Sand is so loose that if falls apart. That's pretty obvious. Anyone who's been to the beach knows that. Then loam is a combination of the two. I always thought loam was some magical soil that was put into the earth in magical veins like caramel in ice cream.
After sifting you'll have a nice pile of rocks
As it turns out, it's simply a good combination of things. My sift-o-matic does a great job of getting the clumps of clay out. An extra benefit is that it gets clumps of grass out too. You can take these little sod pieces and incorporate them back into bare spots in your yard.
Once the sifted dirt is ready, I put it back down on low spots in the yard. I'll put down some manure compost, mulch and seed and hopefully have a lush lawn soon.
A great resource site I found was All About Lawns. I thought it was some cheesy portal at first, but it turns out to have a great deal of good info on getting your yard into shape. Anyone who gets into the soil soon becomes obsessed with it. There's just so many interesting aspects to the material that we grow from. It's like my Dad says, "A man can't feel good until he has a patch of dirt to turn."