I just built a sifter and mined my ranges dirt/clay/rock/clay pigeon berm.
Short version- the sifter ver. 2.0 worked great.
4 five gallon buckets in a little over an hour, total about 300lbs yielded about 150lbs of range scrap.
I need to refine my sorting process at home, but it sure beats hand picking off the berm.
This is my setup, sifter 2’x2’ with 1/4” hardware cloth screwed to the bottom, cut to size with a dremel cutoff wheel.
3 sides are 2x3, the other(back) is a 2x4.
Didn’t plan it that way, just had 3 2’ cutoffs of 2x3 laying around.
Actually works good having a taller back piece when pouring into the bucket.
Use a leaf rake to pull loose material down the berm into a pile and a snow shovel to place it onto the sifter that is sitting on a ruber made tote.
The sifter is larger than the tote, but no big deal if any of the spoils fall on the ground.
Slowly drop the material from a foot or two in as large an area as possible, so if feeds through the sifter on its own as much as possible.
Just use the shovel or your hands to gently move the material around until all the spoils fall through the screen.
Then dump the remaining material in a 5 gallon bucket.
Repeat.
I quickly abandoned the idea of picking up the sifter and shaking it around, too dusty, too much like work.
Taking smaller bites made things go much easier.
Once there is enough spoils in the tote, carry it back up the berm and dump it.
Once again more lighter trips is easier than lugging a heavy tote back up the berm, and then having to dump it while standing on an angle, trying not to get too much dust and dirt on you.
I worked a row the width of the rake at a time, I figure I only worked about 1/6th of our berm, so there is plenty more still there.
The only part that was work was hauling the full buckets back to the van, and loading them.
The heaviest was only 80lbs, but I was sore when I started, so that was enough.
I would like to have more buckets and load them less, I do not trust the handles, and my back would like me better.
Ibuprofen sure helped.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk