Take a five Gallon Bucket - drill holes for picker fingers. Fill bottom and sides with the fingers. Use a 1/2" drill (cheapy 39.99 electric one) connected with a lag bolt in the bottom of the bucket to spin the bucket and pick the bird? Just would need to build a small 2x4 frame to hold the bucket. What do you guys think?
Maybe if you were doing really small birds but the CX....there is no way that would be enough power. I think it would burn the drill up fairly quickly regardless of what size of bird you do. JMHO though!!
Hmmm yeah, you might be right. I got the idea from those little hand held ones people make. I thought, heck, couldn't you just spin a whole bucket?
Keep in mind too that on tub pluckers, the bottom plate spins but the sides are stationary. If the whole thing is spinning, the bird won't get tumbled against the fingers the same way, it would probably just stay in one place and spin along with the bucket.
You can mount the fingers to the drill and hold the chicken yourself and run the fingers over it. Several people have pluckers like that and say they work well.
Yeah, I saw those drill models. I just couldn't think of a way to keep the feathers from going all over the place haha! Back to the drawing board for now!
With your proposed design, you would only end up with a wet, dizzy chicken. Ok, so it would be dead and couldn't be dizzy... Even if the chicken was de-feathered in the machine, the feathers and rinse water would have no place to escape as in a regular tub plucker. You would have a big soupy mess. A friend and I have made multiple Whizbangs and have tried different design options. We're close to having one that would be hand-cranked, but the torque needed is quite a bit. Even with a 3/4 hp farm duty motor you can have slippage if your belt tensioner isn't adequately set up.
looking at another model that was recently posted about here, i would think a large, heavy pulley would work well to keep the plate spinning. it won't eliminate belt slippage, but once going, throwing a chicken or two in wouldn't stop it as easily. we've got an old apple cider mill and press that has a large fly wheel, and once that thing gets going it's a knuckle (and arm) buster that might help with a hand crank model, too
