[Cob] straw chopper

[Shannon C. Dealy]

As long as we are on the theme of chopped straw, I have a couple of 
additional options to add to the mix :-)

  Chaff cutter - I had never heard of or seen one of these before, but they
                 had a hand powered one on a farm I was teaching at last
                 year.  You just put the straw in the chute, turn the crank
                 and the straw feeds through a circular blade.

                 I tried to find a picture on the internet, this one isn't
                 very good and is much larger than the one I saw:

                    http://www.kisancom.com/hand_operated.html

  Screen your building straw - Recently I've been seeing bales with alot
                 more fine bits of straw in them than usual, so I put a
                 large 1/2" mesh screen over a tub and just give all the
                 straw a quick run over the screen before tossing it into
                 the mix.  This keeps the short bits out of the mix giving
                 a longer average straw length and stronger cob, as well as
                 leaving me with a supply of short straw for plastering.
                 The straw for one very small cob building left me with
                 about 60 gallons of short straw for plastering.

Shannon C. Dealy      |               DeaTech Research Inc.
dealy at deatech.com     |          - Custom Software Development -
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