Hocking Valley Corn Sheller–A Fun Restoration

Hi everyone
As most of you know I love scrolling and creating intarsia but in order to keep the doors open at midlothian woodworks I also do custom woodworking , furniture repair and restoration work. so here are a few photos of my newest restoration project.These are the “before ” pics of a Hocking Valley corn sheller
(circa 1900) that I have been commissioned to rebuild and make functional.
Legs have been cut off but all of the mechanical parts are there.

I can’t salvage any of the old wood due to rot and post beetles but enough left for accurate measurements

When I first took on this project I was going to use white oak for the woodwork, but after talking to the owner and getting permission to also do the original paint job I decided to go with the materials that were used in the original—maple for the frame and poplar for the box. After sizing all of the frame components to 1 3/4” x 2 1/8” and cutting to the proper lengths I began with turning the 2 small handles.

There are a lot of mortise and tenon joints used to hold the frame together so I went ahead and set up a tenoning jig to use on the bandsaw. Very simple set-up really. Making absolutely sure that the blade is set to true 90 degrees to the table is critical to using this jig to make tenons. I started by making a small sled that rides in the mater slot which is used to guide the work piece through the blade for the shoulder cuts and an adjustable clamp- on block to use as a reference point for the length of the tenons. I also made a stop block that clamps to the fence that is used to get the depth of the cut. After making a sample tenon to use as a reference I can now set the fence with the stop block and cut all of the tenons to the right depth.

Here is the set-up for cutting the shoulders.

Perfect every time

After all of the tenons were cut and all of the mortises were drilled and chiseled I drilled all of the hardware mounting holes, and did all of the rabbeting on the router table using the original pieces of the frame as a reference.

Here are all of the pieces for the frame.

Here is the dry fit frame

After finishing the cuts for the frame and making sure that everything goes together nicely I went to my local Woodcraft and found a real nice piece of 5/4 poplar to use for the sides of the project. All of the original pieces were a full 1” thick so I needed the 5/4 stock. The piece I found was 8 ft long and 15 ” wide with no knots or green streaks. A perfect find for this project. I needed 2 pieces 9 1/2” x 22” for the bottom sections and 2 pieces 9”x 21” for the top sections with the remaining pieces for the chutes 4 1/4” wide of various lengths . I used the router to make all of the rabbets that fit in the slots of the frame .

Dry fit of the lower sides

On the original corn sheller, the chutes were nailed in but I used dowels to make it easier for assembly

I used the scroll saw to cut out the sections where the shafts go through,and the hole where the corn feeder goes on the top.

Checking out the fit of all the guts of the corn sheller.

All of the parts in place.

I had to order special square headed nuts and bolts to keep it original so in the mean time I will begin the paint job.
When I first took on this project I had my doubts whether or not I could get it to work. After doing a bit of research and finding some good photos of the original corn sheller it was obvious to me that this was going to be a fun little project which would test many of my skills. The only thing that my client wanted was for me to make it functional but I did talk him into letting me do the original paint job as I thought would really add a lot to the over-all looks of the project.Between the original pieces that I had and some photos that I found I had enough information to do the paint job.
Photo of an original Hocking Valley Corn Sheller

So Here is my version of a restored ” Improved Hocking Valley” corn sheller. I hand drew the stencils for the wording and the logos and made templates for the pin-striping on the legs which I hand painted trying to match the original as much as I could.

It was very satisfying to be able to restore a little piece of history.