Wards Grainbuster

I've got a Wards Grainbuster and searched it in the archives and found very little info about it. The tag on the side says, Model No. 74HM-M15-A. From reading thinkin its a model M-15.
My question is was this originally made to grind shelled corn? cobbed corn? read someone would grind alfalfa hay for chicken feed. I know it depends on the screens inside it. Also did the ground feed come out the tube on top of the blower or out the other side on the bottom opening??
On the side its says it needs 2000 or 2200 rpms, (dont remember which it was) to run it. Would one of my Farmalls be able to run it being only 1815 rpms or lower? Might depend on how much feed is put in at a time.
I like to use the older equipment and was gonna use it to grind a little corn for a few beef steers and maybe try that alfalfa hay for my chickens. Archives said alfalfa hay ground up gave them firmer yokes in the eggs.
Ryan in Northern Mich

If the pulley on the Grainbuster is smaller one of your Farmalls should be ok. Hal

The MA-15 mill is a 15" mill sold by Wards in the mid fifties. 1956 catalog information. Grinds up to 9,000 lbs. of ear corn per hour through a 1-in. screen.Feed opening, 15. 476-sq.in. screen area. 32 hammers, 1/4" thick. Size overall: 48in. high, 40 5/8" wide, 64" long4" diameter by 7 3/4" face pulley, 1 3/8" bore. Operates on 2 plow tractor and up.Recommended speed of Rotar is 2400 RPM under load. Shipped with 1/8" screen unless other size is specified. weight with dust collector and bagger 587 pounds. cost was $194.50. Screenes of 1/16, 3/32, 1/8, 3/16, 1/4, 3.8, 1/2, 5/8, 3/4. 1, 1 1/4, 1 1/2, 1 3/4" avaible. The feed came out the blower to the dist collector that was above the mill and dropped the feed either into a wagon loading schute or bagger, the small opening at the bottom is for the blower to be able to get enough air to work. And they will handle all grains and hay. Your tractor has a larger pully and mill a smaller pully so that speeds up the rotor. Questions, later

Brings back memories from when I was a kid. We used one to make "chop". My dad had a M that was hooked up to a belt on a machine like that. We would shovel in shelled corn and oats, and the machine would grind and mix it up and send it out through a tube into burlap bags. There was a flap that would move to switch from one bag to another. Then we would take off the full bag and put on and empty. We fed that mixture to cattle and chickens. At the time a lot of farmers did it different. They would load up the grain into a gravity box and haul it to town and have it ground up at the local grain elevator. Thanks for sharing the picture.

We had a Montgomery Wards similar in cylinder size to the one in the picture. Ours had a traveling feed table that was controlled by a centrifugal clutch. It also had a chute on top for small grain so you could grind hay or ear corn and add soybean concentrate at the same time. You had to use the top chute for any small grain such as oats or milo, as small grain couldn’t be fed through it from the traveling feed table, there was about 1/4 inch gap where the belting turned as it fed the ear corn into the throat. We ground thousands and thousands of bushels of ear corn and many tons of hay through it as well as oats and milo with a Farmall H, but we used bigger pulley on it, I think it came off of an M. The smaller drive pulley on the mill gave it enough RPM’s. (Grinding milo through the 1/4 inch screen did work the snot out of the H though.) It never gave us any trouble; I don’t ever remember even putting a bearing in it. We did change the hammers around one time. They had four different cutting sides that you could use, just turn them over and after that side wore, you could change them end-for-end. (My $0.02 worth. jal-SD)

Back again. The M-15 and the MA-15 used the same screen @ 14 7/8" X 32". Weight was listed at 13 lbs. and $5.19. The M-15 may be in an older catalog. For ear corn us the 1" size but for chickens do not grind ear corn, they cannot digest the cob. On shelled corn about a half inch size screen should work well as chickens need a finer grind than cattle but not a powder. Oats will also work with the same screen as will hay. For hogs we used the 1" for hay.

Do you guys know if I can still buy the other size screens for it?? It only has the one thats in it and that one is a really small hole size, didnt measure it yet.

Hello Ryanwheelock: You can check your RPM by putting the belt into gear and do NOT switch on the electrial so it will NOT start. (tranny also not in gear ) Mark the pully and have a friend note the engine crank position. Try to get the crankshaft turned one full turn. Note how much your pully turned. Then do the 9th grade math to figure speed of pully expected on hammer mill or grain buster as you called it. We had a John Deere mill & I used it for way too many years a long time ago. ag

Grainbuster is the manufacturs name for it.

I'll try to answer your question, but excuse the terminology. The square opening on the one side is the the inlet for air to carry away the ground product. On opposite side, the "tube" carries the material up into the blower, to be blown up the round duct to the cone-shaped part. The ground material swirls around in the cone, and settles to the bottom, and out the chute. At the same time, the air is exhausted out the top of the cone. If the pulley on your tractor is 1 1/2 times the size of the grinder pulley, grinder RPM's should be about right.

Another comment--The grinder originally must have had various screens. Sounds like the one you have would be for shelled corn, oats, or other dry grain. Ear corn could be ground, but it took about a 1" size screen. Grinding cobs or ear-corn takes quite a lot of power---enough to make an "M" IHC grunt.