6 Best Stationary Bean Cleaners For Homesteaders That Old-Timers Trust

Harvesting a bumper crop of dry beans is a triumph, but staring at five buckets of pods, dust, and stems can quickly dampen that spirit. While hand-winnowing works for a garden row, a homestead scale harvest requires a stationary cleaner to ensure your pantry stores are clean and your planting seed is pure. These vintage machines were built to last a century, and finding the right one can turn a multi-day chore into a satisfying afternoon of productive work.

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate, this site earns from qualifying purchases. Thank you!

Why Old-Timers Prefer A.T. Ferrell Clipper Cleaners

If you walk into an old-timer’s granary, you are almost guaranteed to see a Clipper cleaner tucked into the corner. These machines became the industry standard because they rely on a simple, mechanical logic that hasn’t needed an upgrade in nearly a hundred years. They use a combination of vibrating screens and a regulated air blast to separate seeds based on size and weight.

The beauty of the Clipper design is its repairability. Because these machines were the backbone of rural economies, they were built with standard bearings, belts, and wood frames that a handy farmer can fix with basic tools. You aren’t dealing with proprietary sensors or plastic gears that snap under pressure; you’re dealing with solid engineering that respects your time and your wallet.

However, the real reason these are prized is the sheer variety of screens available. You can swap out the metal perforated sheets to transition from cleaning tiny clover seeds to large kidney beans in under five minutes. This versatility makes a single machine the only cleaner a diversified homesteader will ever need to buy.

Clipper 2B Special: The Gold Standard for Beans

The Clipper 2B Special is the "Goldilocks" of the seed cleaning world—not too big for a garage, but powerful enough to handle serious volume. It features a two-screen system where the top screen scalps off large debris like pods and sticks, while the bottom screen sifts out fine dust and split beans.

For a homesteader, the 2B Special is ideal because it typically runs on a small electric motor or can even be converted to a hand-crank in a pinch. It’s heavy enough to stay put while vibrating, yet two people can move it onto a truck bed if needed. It’s the machine you buy when you’re tired of eating "crunchy" beans that still have a bit of field grit in the pot.

• Pros: Massive parts availability, intuitive setup, and highly effective air separation.
• Cons: The wooden frames can rot if stored in damp barns, and they are increasingly hard to find at a bargain price.

Hance 300 Series: Compact Precision for Small Farms

While Clipper gets all the glory, the Hance 300 series is a sleeper hit among those who value floor space. These units are often more vertically oriented than the Clipper models, making them a better fit for tight workshops. They operate on the same basic air-and-screen principle but often feature a more enclosed design that helps contain dust.

Hance machines are particularly good at handling "trashy" harvests where the beans are mixed with a lot of vine material. The way the hopper feeds into the screens is often a bit more forgiving than other vintage models, reducing the amount of time you spend poking at the intake to keep things moving.

If you find a Hance 300, check the condition of the eccentric arms that shake the screens. These are the heart of the machine’s movement. While they are robust, a machine that has been left to rust will require some elbow grease and lubrication to get that smooth, rhythmic "thump-thump" back in action.

Crippen North Star: Heavy-Duty Vintage Reliability

The Crippen North Star is the machine you look for when you plan on cleaning beans for the whole neighborhood. These are built with a level of "over-engineering" that borders on the absurd for a small-scale farm. They are heavier, louder, and more aggressive than the Clipper 2B, but they can process a mountain of beans without breaking a sweat.

The North Star models often feature a more sophisticated air suction system. Instead of just blowing air through the falling seed, they use a vacuum-style lift to pull light chaff away. This results in a much cleaner finished product, especially when dealing with beans that have a lot of hollow or insect-damaged seeds that look normal but weigh less.

Keep in mind that a Crippen is a permanent fixture. Once you set it in your barn, you aren’t going to want to move it. It’s a tool for the homesteader who has graduated from a hobby to a small-scale production or a community seed-sharing hub.

Clipper Office Tester: Ideal for Small Seed Batches

Not every bean project involves fifty-pound sacks; sometimes you are just trying to preserve a pint of a rare heirloom variety. The Clipper Office Tester is a miniature version of the big cleaners, designed originally for labs to test seed quality. It fits on a sturdy workbench and uses small, 10×10 inch screens.

This is the perfect tool for the "seed nerd" who focuses on diversity over volume. It allows you to clean small batches with extreme precision without wasting the few handfuls of seed that might get lost in the nooks and crannies of a full-sized machine.

• Best for: Rare heirlooms, trial plots, and cleaning garden-scale harvests.
• Trade-off: You cannot process bulk amounts quickly, and the screens are specific to this model, so they can be harder to find second-hand.

Forsberg Model 50: Advanced Gravity Separation Tech

Sometimes, size-based cleaning isn’t enough. If you have mud balls or small stones that are the exact same size as your beans, a screen cleaner will let them pass right through. This is where the Forsberg Model 50 gravity separator becomes a game changer.

Instead of just screens, the Forsberg uses a vibrating slanted deck and a high-pressure cushion of air to float the seeds. Heavier items like stones stay low and move one way, while the lighter beans "float" down the slope in another direction. It is a mesmerizing process that produces a level of purity you simply can’t get with air and screens alone.

For most homesteaders, this is a secondary machine used after a primary cleaning. It’s an investment in quality, ensuring that your home-canned beans never contain a tooth-cracking pebble. It requires a bit more finesse to tune the air flow and deck angle, but the results are professional-grade.

Carter-Day Disc Separator: Perfect for Length Sizing

A common headache in bean cleaning is the "broken half." A split bean might have the same width as a whole bean but a different length. A standard screen cleaner often fails to remove these, leaving you with a bag of beans that cook unevenly. The Carter-Day Disc Separator solves this by sorting by length.

The machine contains a series of rotating discs with specially shaped indents or "pockets." As the discs spin through the grain mass, they pick up the short pieces (like split beans or weed seeds) and lift them into a separate discharge chute, while the long, whole beans stay behind.

This is a specialized piece of equipment, but for a homesteader selling "soup mixes" or high-end dry beans, it is the secret to a premium product. It’s a mechanical solution to a problem that usually requires tedious hand-sorting.

Essential Replacement Parts for Your Clipper Cleaner

Buying a vintage cleaner is just the first step; keeping it running requires a small inventory of wear items. The most important thing to stock up on is a variety of screens. You’ll want several "top" screens (round holes for scalping) and "bottom" screens (slotted holes for sifting) to account for different bean sizes each season.

Don’t overlook the brushes. Most Clipper-style cleaners have brushes that move back and forth under the screens to keep the holes from plugging up. If these brushes are worn down or missing, your cleaning efficiency will drop by half. Replacing them is a cheap way to make an old machine run like new.

• V-Belts: Keep a spare set; old rubber cracks and slips.
• Screen Cleaning Balls: Some models use rubber balls instead of brushes to bounce against the screens.
• Bearings: Most vintage cleaners use standard pillow-block bearings that are easily replaced if the machine starts "screaming."

Choosing a stationary bean cleaner is an investment in the long-term resilience of your homestead. Whether you find a dusty Clipper 2B at a farm auction or a precision Office Tester for your heirloom seeds, these machines bridge the gap between the field and the table. Once you experience the efficiency of mechanical cleaning, you’ll spend less time sorting through chaff and more time enjoying the literal fruits of your labor.