He Built His Own 96-Ft Grain Leg

He Built His Own 96-Ft Grain Leg GRAIN HANDLING Miscellaneous 28-3-27 "We built our own 96-ft. tall grain leg last winter year. It's equipped with 14-in. buckets and handles about 110 bu. of wheat, oats, or barley a minute. We saved a lot of money by building it ourselves," says Wilfred Mollenbeck, St. Gregor, Sask. Mollenbeck uses the grain leg both for custom drying and for custom seed cleaning. "We had been using two augers powered by a 60 hp gas engine to move grain. Using a grain leg is a lot cheaper because we can get by with just a 7 hp electric motor," says Mollenbeck, who farm with his brother Robert and sons Dennis and Kevin. He used 5 by 10-ft. sheets of 11-ga. steel to build the leg. He also built the distributor on top, as well as a 10 by 10-ft. platform. To install the leg, he poured 24-in. thick concrete footings 20 ft. deep and then installed four anchor posts in them. A 30-ton crane was used to set the leg in place. Cables extend from the top of the leg down to the concrete. "We use the leg to distribute grain to a half dozen different bins. Some of the bins are used just for drying grain and the others for seed cleaning. We originally built it to custom dry grain. However, it worked so good that it wasn't long before we decided to set up a seed cleaning plant beside it. I've also built two other grain legs for my neighbors. All together we spent $4,000 (Canadian) on materials. A comparable commercial grain leg would have cost about $150 a foot, or $14,400." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Wilfred Mollenbeck, Box 46, St. Gregor, Sask., Canada S0K 3X0 (ph 306 366-2113).

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