YOU CAN RENT OR BUY A COPY OF MY SIFTER.

About 1985, while teaching archaeology for Maple Woods C.C, I realized students were spending too much time either waiting on a sifter or actually sifting.  We only had so many screens and it was taking up to 30 minutes to sift through a 5 gallon bucket of dirt.

So, over a rainy weekend, I took apart an old washing machine for the motor and pulley  and I had some old bed frame rails and I welded it all together to make an automatic sifter.  Other parts came from an old mower and a shovel.

I didn't like workinig with metal much and certainly was no welder, but I somehow did it and it worked.

It could run off 120V or off a generator and could sift a 5 gallon bucket in less than 15 seconds!  It can also be retro fitted with a gasoline engine.

I had different sized screens, depending on how wet the dirt was that day.

The class had named it, The Gasoline Powered Automatic Sifter, or GPAS for short.

Gpas ran (on average), 16 Saturdays a year from 1985 through 1993, and then 14 days in the summer of 2000 at Line Creek Park.

I estimated it sifted at least 1,420, 5 gallon buckets, or at least 7,100 gallons of dirt.  The only thing I ever had to replace on it was the switch, which was used when I put it on.

I retired it after the summer of 2000 where it sat rusting away in my ex-wife's back yard.  In May of 2022, I picked it up and brought it to my garage to restore it.  Over the last 22 years, the motor came up missing as well as the brackets that held it on.  That's okay, because the motor woud never have been any good by now anyway.

You can rent or buy this sifter.  Rental is $100 per month with a $100 deposit, or you can buy it outright or a exact copy of it for $3,000.  It's powered by a 3/4 horse electric motor that is new and comes with a 1/2 screen.  The screen is easily removable for easy cleaning.  Just email me at:  m80dadfireworks@aol.com

These are the only two photos I had of it and they were taken at Line Creek Park.  See the extension cord on the ground in back?  It ran 300' to the museum when it was still there.

Got it home on Monday, May 2nd and it was in pretty rough shape.  Two of the wheels on the sifter had siezed up as well as the main front wheel.  It was going to take a lot of TLC to get this nearly 37 year old machine up an running.

I pretty much started by soaking everything in oil and getting the wheels off and making a parts list.  Although I wanted to keep it as original as possible, I wanted to cut down on the vibration noise it made when running.  I'd do this by using the correct sized bolts.  Back then, I used whatever I could find laying around.

I was able to free up the siezed wheels and began the task of removing the rust.

Day 3.  Now we're talkin'!   Besides some paint, I put on all new bearings, stainless steel bolts, bushings and washers.  I adjusted the connections so this thing will make as litle excess noise as possible.  It's actually designed to run by either electric motor or a gasoline engine and that's why is has such a long "nose".  The design also allows you to just push it forward a few feet once the dirt fills up under the screen.  There are interchangable screens, depending on the dirt type.  That's not the actual motor in the pic.  That's an old one I had laying around.  I'm waiting on the new one which is the same type that's in most washing machines which are designed to start off with a heavy load.  The key to the whole thing is where the pivit is attached to the flywheel and the speed of the motor.  Too fast or slow and it won't sift at all, so it's tuned to the motor.  Also, there are fasteners under the screen wheels that bounce the screen up and down, which is the second most important part.