Vintage Fanning Mill

A fanning mill is a machine designed to separate week, such as regresses, knapweeds, wheat grasses, and wild oats, from seeds and to sort the seeds of grain, legume, and other vegetable crops by specific weight.  Fanning mills are also used in the processing of hybrid and varietal corn kernels to separate damaged kernels and stalk sections from the bulk harvested material.

In a fanning mill the seeds fall onto an inclined separating platform with a mesh bottom.  They are then subjected to longitudinal shaking and are blown with a stream of air form a fan to form layers.  The seeds with the highest specific weight descend through the layers to the bottom and form the first yield.  Seeds of low specific weight and weed seeds rise and mix together on the surface to form the second yield (weed seeds and contaminants with average specific weight) and third yield (the lightest seeds).  This fanning mill was operated by the crank below.