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A cranberry harvester is a small handy device with which you can pick berries much faster and better than in the classic way – by hand. Recommended for every cranberry picker. The combine can be simply purchased, as they are produced by the industry and are commercially available. But you can also make it yourself, with your own hands from available materials, it is not difficult and does not take much time.
How to make a do-it-yourself cranberry harvester
Anyone who has ever picked cranberries knows how difficult it is to pick small berries by hand and how long it takes to fill the basket to the top. It is much easier not to pick them individually, but to use a simple device for harvesting – a cranberry harvester.
It is not difficult to make it with your own hands, for this you do not need to have any special knowledge and skill. As a material for manufacturing, it is best to use durable dry wood or a sheet of thin metal. In order to make a harvester you will need:
- a piece of galvanized or tin;
- wooden planks with a thickness of not more than 1 cm;
- hard thick wire for making teeth;
- a piece of wood or a piece of metal plate for a pen;
- scissors for metal;
- hacksaw or jigsaw;
- drill;
- quick-drying glue;
- self-tapping screws.
Steps to make a homemade cranberry harvester:
- Cut out a pattern from thick paper according to the drawing.
- Put it on a sheet of metal.
- Cut out the desired pieces with scissors.
- One by one, bend them so that you can connect them into a single whole.
- From the wire, make teeth in the right amount.
- To secure them, you will need a fastener, which can be made from a small wooden block.
- Drill holes in it with a depth of 1,5–2 cm and a width along the diameter of the rods.
- Make a handle out of wood or metal of such a size that it fits comfortably in your hand.
- Bend the wire, grease the ends with a layer of glue and insert into the holes of the mounting plate, press and wait until they stick.
- Screw the resulting structure with self-tapping screws to the body.
- Make a handle and also attach it to another bar.
- Connect the body and sidewalls with self-tapping screws.
- Using pliers, bend the edges of the case near the teeth located on the edge.
The second version of the harvester for picking berries, which can be built at home, is made of wood. It is even easier to make: just cut the planks to the required dimensions and connect them together with glue or self-tapping screws. The teeth can be carefully sawn with a jigsaw or a hacksaw on the front edge of the body and the cuts can be sanded. To make the tree last longer, it can be varnished and dried. Alternatively, you can make teeth from metal rods.
Drawing harvester for harvesting cranberries
To make it easier to understand what parts a cranberry harvester consists of and how to assemble it, you can take a look at the figure below. It is necessary to make all the component parts, also adhering to the drawing, so that they fit well together.
Principle of operation
This small device does not damage ripe berries and plants during operation, ensuring a quick and gentle picking of cranberries. A manual harvester for harvesting cranberries in appearance resembles a bulky bucket or scoop with teeth or arcuate cutters at the front edge: they pry and pluck the berries from the branches. The distance between them should be slightly less than the size of an average cranberry: this is enough for the fruits to pass between them and come off. Berries are plucked with these teeth, then they fall into the container (device body), which is gradually filled with them. When this happens, the crop can be poured into a basket.
The cranberry harvester is very easy to use and efficient: the twigs and leaves of plants pass through the teeth, so they do not tangle or tear. The device has a rounded shape, so it can be used to collect cranberries growing in small depressions. Another advantage of the cranberry harvester: its use allows you to speed up the process of picking berries by 3-5 times compared to the usual manual method.
Collecting cranberries with a harvester
It is very easy to pick berries with a cranberry harvester of our own production – just put the teeth under the cranberry branches and carefully lift it above the plants: the berries will easily break off and roll into a large container. You can learn how to quickly harvest cranberries using a harvester in just a few hours. But, despite the simplicity, the technology of collecting cranberries requires the implementation of certain rules. For example, you can not jerk the harvester sharply if its teeth are tangled in twigs and leaves. If you pull, you can tear off the shoots, or even worse – uproot the entire plant, after which it will dry out.
It is also important to consider the time of harvesting cranberries. It has been empirically established that it is much better to pick berries when they have reached full ripeness, and not before. The berries themselves can ripen separately, but the unripe ones will spoil faster, will not be so tasty, fragrant and healthy. In addition, unripe berries are harder to pick, they sit more firmly on the branches, so picking will require some effort and take longer. If it so happened that a certain number of leaves and twigs broke off along with the berries, then you do not need to immediately get rid of them: they can be collected, dried, and then brewed together with ordinary tea and drunk as a vitamin or medicinal drink.
Conclusion
A cranberry harvester is a very simple device in design and use, which is recommended for any experienced or novice harvester of these berries to have in their household. It is easy to make it with your own hands from materials that are always at hand, using a simple detailed drawing. A cranberry harvester will be a great helper when picking small berries, speed up the process and make it more comfortable and of high quality.
