MARKETING PEANUTS 
27 
Shelling operations are seldom so numerous or so complicated as 
those required to prepare goods in the shell for bagging. The clean- 
ing is often limited to running the pods through a stoner, dirt reel, 
and fan. The stoner is a shaft in which the nuts fall into a strong 
current of air traveling upwards, which lifts the nuts and light trash, 
but allows the stones, pieces of metal, and other heavy substances 
to drop into a receptacle on a lower floor. The stoner is chiefly 
employed in shelling Spanish, and only rarely for peanuts of the 
Virginia type. 
In the shelling machinery the pods are broken by forcing them 
between two cylinders, the outer one of which is stationary. To 
Fig. 10. — "Tumbler" in which peanuts receive a coating of fine white powder before being graded 
and sacked. Peanuts enter revolving cylinder at left-hand portion of picture and leave at right- 
hand end. Surplus powder has fallen through wire mesh to floor in right-hand portion of picture 
the inner, revolving cylinder are attached two steel " beaters," 
which strike and crack the hulls of the nuts. The broken pods and 
the meats which have fallen out are then carried to a shaft in which 
an upward current of air removes the hulls and light trash. In 
some plants this nonedible material is blown directly into the firebox 
in the engine room. Three tons of hulls and other trash are con- 
sidered equal to 1 ton of coal as a fuel, and hulls are frequently 
disposed of in this way. 
The shelled meats fall through the air suction and are separated 
into several sizes by means of perforated screens. An air current 
blows away most of the small ends of unshelled peanuts, called 
nubs, which have come through the openings in the screen with the 
No. 1 nuts. A few remaining unshelled peanuts, together with badly 
shriveled, broken, or moldy nuts, are picked out by hand as the 
nuts pass in a thin layer over picking tables similar to those employed 
