Mission

This web site was created to help people to grow and process rice. Removing the husk from rice is very difficult without a rice de-huller. Many, many hours of work and trying lots of different materials were needed before our team created usable designs for hand and bike powered rice hullers using inexpensive parts. We could not find a good rice huller for less than $2,000 (shipping not included) which is too much money for those growing less than 100 pounds of rice per year. Our current designs are based on the counter rotating pinch roller concept described in detail below. We are also exploring designs for human powered impact (centrifugal) hullers. This web site was created to help people to grow and process rice. Removing the husk from rice is very difficult without a rice de-huller. Many, many hours of work and trying lots of different materials were needed before our team created usable designs for hand and bike powered rice hullers using inexpensive parts. We could not find a good rice huller for less than $2,000 (shipping not included) which is too much money for those growing less than 100 pounds of rice per year. Our current designs are based on the counter rotating pinch roller concept described in detail below. We are also exploring designs for human powered impact (centrifugal) hullers.

Interestingly, we've received inquiries from around the world (India, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Brazil, Africa, USA, Canada and more) which indicate to us there is a world wide need for very low volume rice hullers. All are welcome to use these designs to make a rice huller for themselves or manufacture for sale. There is a page dedicated to a homemade impact de-huller which we suggest be the first choice because once built no adjustments are needed. We are no longer trying to make improvements to the design.

These are the three types of hand or hand and bike powered rice hullers we've developed. They are all based on the pinch roller concept in which one roller turns at 1/2 or less than the speed of the other roller. A rice huller based of this type of design draws the rice between the rollers and because of the different speeds the hulls are sheared away from the grain of rice. Besides finding the right material for the rollers we found a method to inexpensively control feed rate of the paddy into the pinch point between the rollers. The rice is moved out of the feed hopper by a shaft covered with sandpaper. The cost of materials range from $20 for the very basic rice huller to $160 for the huller which uses a chain and sprockets. Using the chain and sprocket and not separating the paddy from the de-hulled rice, one pound of paddy takes about 5 minutes to get the paddy to 98% hulled or 10 pounds per hour. The de-hulling rate could be doubled or more if the hulled and unhulled are separated between passes through the huller. It is two times faster or better with separation between passes. The video below explains the 3 huller designs, paddy between two pieces of wood, using plastic tubing for the rollers, using the Stoltz RP-57 rollers with gap and load adjustment, using the RP-57 rollers with a chain and sprockets and a simple separator.