My Whizbang Chicken Plucker

As you may or may not know a few weeks ago I ordered the book by Herrick Kimball "Anyone Can Build A Tub-Style Mechanical Chicken Plucker ." It was pretty fun to build but I got tired of forgetting to by this or that bolt and having to keep going back to the store. I highly recommend these plans if you are interested in building one. There are a lot of different parts for this thing and some are easy to find and some you can purchase from Mr. Kimball. The initial frame was pretty simple and there is a local Soy Sauce plant that has free 55 Gallon plastic Barrels. I also already had an electric motor from my Apple Crusher.

The first step was to build the frame.

Then cut the barrel

and drill the holes for the fingers

This is what the fingers look like. The fingers do the pluckin.

Then I put the figures in the holes I drilled in the barrel

My buddy cut this out for me and drilled the holes. So I saved about $100 on this piece.

After drilling the holes they were tapered

Then the fingers were pulled through. This was supposed to be the hard part but I didn't have any trouble with it. This plate goes in the bottom of the barrel and spins.

And this is what the top view looks like after the feather plate was installed under the tub.

Here is a picture from from the underside minus this belt. The large pulley is driven by the electric motor. It is connected to the feather plate by a shaft the is bolted to the plate.

 And here is the finished product. It will be put to use this weekend.