24 HARVESTING, STORING, AND MARKETING 



to 14-inch difference between them, all apples being of the 

 same grade and all uniform in size within narrow limits in a 

 given package. The finished package looks better, and the 

 buyer knows what to expect and can make his calculations 

 better. The selling price is therefore more satisfactory. 



The sizer should provide facilities at the hopper end for 

 sorting the fruit for blemishes before passing it to the sizing 

 section. Workers may remove defective specimens while the 

 fruit is moving slowly on the conveyors en route to the vari- 

 ous compartments. The sizing devices may be diverging belts 



{Geo. G. Bates) 



Fig. 7. A simple, but effective machine which both cleans and sizes the 

 fruit. The cleaning device is a flexible bristle brush running over the 

 top of the fruit. The sizing mechanism, the spiral rollers, directs the 

 fruit to the various compartments. 



or spiral rollers, or rings or cups of varying sizes, dropping out 

 the culls first, carrying the smaller sizes into side compart- 

 ments and the largest size for which the machine is set to the 

 end or the last compartment. The fruit is then packed from 

 these compartments. 



Western boxed apples are graded as Extra Fancy, Fancy, 

 or C grade. The size is denoted by the number of apples in 

 the box. Extra Fancy calls for the highest measure of per- 

 fection that can be attained commercially; Fancy allows for 

 some tolerance as to color and slight imperfections; C grade 

 takes fruit of less color and less perfect as to shape, etc., 

 though still perfectly sound. 



