Corn Sheller

Hi all,

I bought and old hand crank sheller today, it's an all metal one, metal frame with galvanized sheet metal on it. I am going to fix it up and shell my popcorn with it. Put an electric motor on it, fix a busted casting, and I'll have to make a new feed trough for it. I found the old IHC emblems in some of the castings, which is cool, I just stumbled upon it at a yard sale and didn't care what brand it was as long as it was an all metal one. My question is this- I found traces of yellow paint on the side behind a casting I have to repair, and some yellow on the inside of it, too. Looks like a cub cadet yellow. All of the IH ones I've seen are red, is it possible that this one could have always been yellow? I want to paint it up while I'm working on it. The flywheel on the side is different than the others I've seen, also, I think it may be a little older than the ones I've seen. Sorry to ramble, I'd gust like to know if anybody remembers anything about these old corn shellers. -Andy

Just pondering here. But I remember playing with one of those as a kid in the 50's. It wouldn't take much cranking to shell enough popcorn for a whole years supply. So going through all that work to convert it to electric power for a couple seconds of run time just doesn't seem practical to me, but it would be fun doing it.

If you are going to convert it to electric you might as well convert it to run off an old IHC hit and miss engine.

I have one of those old corn shellers that my dad had bought at a farm sale years ago. I then bought it at his farm sale. One year my dad planted popcorn from free seed he got from the seed corn salesman. Well, he put it in the two row planter boxes and ended up planting 4 rows quarter mile long. He just went out with the corn picker and picked the popcorn and we got a wagon load. We shelled all that popcorn with this hand corn sheller and ended up with way too much popcorn. Everyone got popcorn for Christmas that year and years to follow. Anyway, after I had it for a few years I decided to rebuild it. The shafts were badly worn, so I bought new shafting and had the side castings bored out to accept bronze bushings. That was not the thing to do. I spent hours shimming those side castings so I could turn the corn sheller. Apparently, originally there must have been quite a loose fit of the shafts in those side castings. However, after all the alignment I did it now runs like a top. When I took mine apart the inside was painted green where I could see paint as the outside we had just painted some color. This one is a IH corn sheller because when I sandblasted it the insignia was slightly visible under the paint. Roger

I thought of that, and it would be cool. I just don't have a hit and miss engine, and I don't forsee getting one soon. I kind of want one of the throttle governed ones. Maybe eventually I'll build a cool setup like that. For now I'm going to finish it (I'm almost done, just got to get a second coat of paint on it and re-assemble it) and see how well it cranks by hand. I may use it that way, or I may make it electric. I did decide to paint it yellow, I bought some cub cadet yellow and am going to town on it, looks ok so far.