24 BULLETIN 1401, IT. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
bins for different varieties and different grades of these varieties, in 
which peanuts are stored in bulk. Outlets under these bins allow 
the peanuts to drop onto a broad belt which conveys them to the 
factory, where they are raised by cup elevators to the top floor of the 
plant. If the peanuts are stored in the factory in sacks, they are 
elevated to the floor on which the large hoppers are located and 
there begin the rather complicated journey through the cleaning and 
shelling machinery. 
CLEANING OPERATIONS 
From the hopper the peanuts pass into a sand and dirt reel which 
has small openings to allow dirt to drop through. By rubbing 
against each other in the real, some of the soil in the little indenta- 
tions in the hull of the peanuts is rubbed out and the pods acquire 
a slight polish. The reel also breaks off many stems. 
STEMMING OPERATIONS 
In some mills the next step is the stemming process, to remove 
little stems or roots which connected the pods to the vines and were 
not cut off when the plants went through the picking machinery. 
The principle somewhat resembles that involved in the ginning of 
cotton, and old cotton gins with dull teeth have at times been em- 
ployed for stemming peanuts. Several types of stemmers are used. 
The preferred method employs a cylinder made by stringing iron 
pulleys on a shaft with a small space between each pulley. Below 
the cylinder are two or three rows of small saws so spaced on a shaft 
as to extend up into the spaces between the pulleys. These saws 
catch the stems of the peanuts and pull them off or cut them up so 
that a fan can remove them. 
FANNING OPERATIONS 
Fans and aspirators (fig. 8) are important machines in a cleaning 
plant, and are used all through the cleaning operations. The more 
fanning processes the peanuts go through, the less work is left to the 
laborers at the picking table later. A carefully regulated fan removes 
the light stems, chaff, empty pods and other non-edible material. 
This may be sold to near-by farmers for bedding or hog feed, and 
dairymen sometimes buy it for cattle feed. Light-weight pods, 
containing shriveled kernels, are later blown from the heavier-weight 
stock, because fancy or jumbo grades allow only small percentages 
of them. Some of these blown-out pods may be used in the extra 
or cheapest grade, or all may be shelled. 
SEPARATING OR GRADING OPERATIONS 
The grading or separating of peanuts in the shell into various 
sizes is usually done by a series of sloping, revolving cylinders made 
of metal bars fastened together. The spaces between these bars 
are adjusted to make the grades desired, as the peanuts are forced 
along the cylinders by gravity and the pressure of the other goods 
behind. The first operation is to take out the smallest of the nuts, 
which are either shelled or used in the extra grade. In the next 
step, the second size or fancy nuts fall through slightly wider slotted 
