John’s Homemade Worm Harvester

Homemade Worm Harvester

After writing my post about Alan Bishop’s DIY worm harvester I received and email from John who had recently built something similar himself. He sent a long some pics and encouraged me to write about it on the ‘Share Board’. So here you go!

Here is John’s brief description of the system:

We used a 5 gallon bucket and some 1/4 inch screen & a Rubbermaid type tub. We
also added horizontal bars to act as beater bars to gently help the
process along.

Thanks again for sharing that John!
8)

Homemade Worm Harvester


P.S. Apologies for the lull in blog postings – it has been a challenging week and a half, but things are looking up. I’ll be writing an update post (announcing upcoming projects/posts and revisiting some other stuff I let fall by the wayside) soon, so that should help to start getting things back up to speed around here.
🙂

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Comments

    • Kim from Milwaukee
    • September 25, 2008

    That looks awesome! Would John consider posting instructions for this? And why did he go with screws instead of zip ties??

    • Jeff
    • September 27, 2008

    in my opinion, the rivets are a very good idea….

    • vermiman
    • September 27, 2008

    How does the turning of the harvester work?

  1. Wow! I recently blogged about my plans to start a (homemade) worm bin and then found your site while researching how to actually do that. So much information! I will have to go back and add a link from that post to your site, if that’s okay?

  2. I plan on making my own soon. I will be sure to take pictures and let you know if it is a success. My bins really need harvesting.

    • scott
    • February 24, 2009

    I too am interested in the seperation process, though I have some time to go before this is an issue…. as a professional sheet metal fabricator I am fairly confident in my capabilities also…. my interest is in optimal screen size for worm/egg/compost seperation and whether or not the 13 inch diameter of a 5 gal bucket can provide adequate space to tumble a moist compost…. should it be allowed to dry out a little first? is it not better to use a larger diameter if available? Also… has anyone designed a smaller scale unit that does multiple size screenings in a single pass? Say a quarter inch screen surrounded by a 1/8 inch screen that both dump to seperate resovoirs?

    • Bentley
    • February 24, 2009

    Scott – you don’t happen to live in southwestern Ontario (Canada) do you?
    Haha
    I’d love to connect with someone with your sort of work experience (who also happens to be interested in vermicomposting). Building stuff is not exactly my strong suit.
    😆

    As for letting the compost dry out a bit – this is definitely not a bad idea. If you are using open systems this shouldn’t be too difficult, but with enclosed bins, the material will likely need to be taken out and allowed to sit for a period of time. Mucky stuff just won’t work well with a harvester like this.

    Your idea for multiple screen sizes is interesting!
    8)

    • John W.
    • November 15, 2012

    I know I am a little late on this 🙂 but…
    How is he suspending that bucket on the rubbermaid? I am trying to figure out how the bucket is being spun???

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