It was a slow day, so I made a little video showing a neat trick that I wanted to post here for a long time. Here goes...

When filling a bucket from a larger bin, if you make your spout a little lower than the lip of the bucket, then the bucket will never overflow. It is also a nice way of measuring out a consistent amount of corn, one bucket after another. I know that many of you already know this but might enjoy seeing a little video showing the effect in action. Click on the first pic, below, to start the brief 3 MB video.



The setup, btw, is discussed and shown here in better detail: forum.iburncorn.com/viewtopic.php?t=6345 . The bin's spout is, in effect, a mini gravity-fed kan-burn that is used to collect cracked corn in the smaller bucket for feeding birds. Here's a better pic showing the bin and mini kb:



... and here is another video showing a closeup of the cracked corn collection. Here, again, click on the pic to start the video.



... and, for completeness, here is the WIKI page for the mini Kan-burn:
forum.iburncorn.com/wiki/index.php/Kan_Burn_Mini

Nice job Corny. So do you close off the shute and let the rest fall when you move the bucket away or do you put another bucket in it's place? I love the coned barrel with the eye holes so you can see how much corn you have. You realy have a nice set up all around and a lot of good though going into it. Happy burning.

Thanks, Nogas! Nothing original except perhaps the mini-kb, which was a new variant of the classic momma kb at the time; so really, all the ideas originated from this forum. The barrel with welded cone idea came from a biofuel forum along with dimensions for cutting the cone (now here in the IBC WIKI: forum.iburncorn.com/wiki/index.php/Vacuu...l_.26_External_Cones) . The idea of the barrel viewports came from Fabricator in the old ibc forum (I miss that guy -- he sure knows how to fabricate).

I suppose there's more than one way to fill buckets. In my case, I prefer to close the blast gate when the flow stops. I then use my hand to pull forward a bit of corn in the bucket. That allows the chute (mini-kb) to empty, making it easy to swap buckets. I then re-open the blast gate then repeat.

Slow day, eh Corny...so you just had to find something to fill up time?? I'm glad you did, cool little videos, wonderful set-up, thanks for sharing them with us!

Hubby built me a plywood transfer box to move corn from the big crib. It holds about 4 bu., positioned so I can move corn from the crib to the box with the shop vac. A quick exhange of vac hose from the box to the screener/cleaner, I'm set to clean corn for the little girl. I use a plastic pitcher to dip the corn from the box to the screener/cleaner, which drops it into my rubbermaid 14 gal. "house" containers (I usually put 30-40# of corn in them to save hubby's back when he carries them into the house).

Hmmm...just dawned on me...I think he's trying to fix it so I can do all of the cleaning corn work...without his help. Ver-r-r-ry interesting...

Sounds like you have something quite workable, Steady, as long as hub's back holds out and his inspiration doesn't. Wishing you luck !