An inexpensive set of durable seed sorting sieves

A little DIY project:
http://davesgarden.com/community/blogs/t/Katlian/10997/

This message was edited Jan 4, 2009 1:15 PM

your link does'nt work (access denied)

Okay, this one should work.
http://davesgarden.com/community/blogs/t/Katlian/10997/

Great idea. Now I use my kitchen sieves. I have a lot, but in busy times cleaning the seeds I'm without them either in the kitchen or in my 'seed cleaning room'. Will ask my DH to go after the metalmesh and fix some for me.
Thanks for sharing this.
Jonna

I hope you can find some similar parts in Belgium Jonna. I bought everything at a local hardware store but I guess they don't have the same pipe sizes in Europe.

I really don't know if we can find the same things here in Belgium. I found out that a lot of things that you can buy in the UA can't be bought in Europe. But my DH is very skilful, so I hand it over to him.

How much do you have invested in a set?

The PVC parts were about $3 each and the mesh was left over from some other projects so I'm not sure how much that cost.

Very clever! I'm gonna pursue getting some of those made! That will be a huge time saver.
Thanks for sharing,
Neal

Katlian,
You are a genius!!! I love your idea. I'm going to have to make me some seed sieves too.
Pam

You can order 1-foot squares of wire cloth from MSCdirect.com, in almost any mesh size imaginable, for $4-5 per square foot.

You can go here and search for "wire cloth", then filter by opening size, material, or mesh per inch:
http://www1.mscdirect.com/CGI/N2DRVSH?SISHNO=14262710&SISRCH=1&SIS0NO=1492404&SIT4NO=92536880&SIOR=2

Or go here and browse the "Big Book" pages 1806-1810, which I prefer:
http://www1.mscdirect.com/CGI/NNPDFF?PMPAGE=1806&PMITEM=52431277&PMCTLG=00

On page 1810, for around $5 per square foot, Stainless Steel "bolting cloth" looks designed for fine sifting. It lists 16, 18, 20, 24, 30, 40, 50, 60 & 74 mesh. The openings are 0.0037" to 0.053". It looks like the best value.

Galvanized steel "after-weaving wire cloth" on page 1809 has some cheap coarser options at 10, 14, 16 and 24 mesh (openings 0.014" to 0.080"). Mostly $4 but 12 mesh is $7.38 with 0.065" openings.

Page 1808 has Stainless steel "milling grade wire cloth" with 4-60 mesh, mostly for $8 / square foot.

Page 1808 also has plain steel wire cloth (page 1808). It is the cheapest, but rusts VERY easily. Mostly $4-5 and some $7-9. Meshes (holes per inch) include 10, 12, 14 and 16 through 60. Openings are as small as 0.0090" or as big as you want.

Aluminum wire cloth on page 1809 can be around $9, or have very fine mesh, but not both.

Rick Corey

I finally found those PVC parts and made several. They are very handy, thanks very much for the post that cuased me to keep searching for those exact parts (PVC DWV Sewer & Drain Adapters ).

The "DWV" was the key part of the name. I'm still looking for a tightly-fitting flat end cap.

However, now I realize:
- there is always a range of seed sizes in any given batch of seeds
- no matter how you shake it or rub it, some chaff is always the same size as your seeds.

Now that I have the nested seives, I always use them as the first step in separating pods and big chaff from seeds.
They will also separate powdered chaff from reasonably large seeds.

But I need other steps like blowing and picking to finish the cleaning.

And I plan to get some more sizes of wire cloth - maybe 12 or 14 and 18 or 20 mesh. I have 6, 10, 16, and much-too-fine (30 mesh).

Corey