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Bought a large sifter, look close, I enlarged some holes. I like the personal touch, no machine. I then, at the same time break the long ones.
My stove does not burn a lot of pellets on thermostat.
I use a colander as well and dump my pellets into a large 50 lb. garbage can, but when all is said and done I end up scooping fines into my furnace when I get down to the bottom of the can, so I'm probably not doing myself any good by trying to sift them out that way. Other guys have rigged up contraptions made of PVC pipe and funnels so that they can drop their pellets into a funnel with a shop vac hooked up to PVC tee/elbow, that seems to be the most effective method of removing fines, but you end up cutting down on how much ash that Shop Vac can hold because the vac becomes filled with fines. I've never had issues just letting the fines drop through into the burn chamber, they coat the inside of the burn chamber which actually seems to help reduce ash build-up on the inside of the box. So, it becomes debatable whether or not a small amount of fines can serve some purpose inside a pellet burner.
I found some scrap wood and made the "TRH Wood Pellet Fines Sifter"
It fits right over a metal trash barrel and you just dump a bag in. After the sawdust is sifted into the barrel, the sifter is tilted so the end that the red arrows point are into the pellet bag!!
Just fine window screen at Home Depot and scrap wood!
Check out the above link to a thread in regard to a homemade pellet vacuum.
I made one of these and started using it a few weeks ago. It works very well. If I don't vacuum the fines from my pellets my house ends up full of dust in no time. It's either vacuum the pellets, or vacuum the house.
my theory is if you are going to paythat kind of money for pellets you should be able to burn them without further processing. If not change brands. Or if you want to do the work burn corn and make the little extra work pay off.
Ditto, why waste the time, they burn just fine as-is in a Harman. Just open & empty that funky little chamber in the back once a year. I never thought of trying to CLEAN 6 tons of pellets, that makes my head hurt to even contemplate.
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