Homemade DIY Grain Bins Part 2

 

Well the building of feed storage bins has been going well. Here is a brief rundown of the materials we used to construct our homemade feed bins.

2×12 lumber. 4 pieces cut 40″ long

A couple 2×4 for center supports.

These pieces would get screwed together to make a base 40″ square. This gives us a nice base to attach our floor to, as well as something solid to screw the castors into.

After the base was bolted together we took a piece of 3/4″ advantek flooring and screwed it on. We happen to have some lying around the barn, so that’s what we used. Any 3/4 plywood should work.  The heavier stuff is recommended due to the weight, but it’s possible to get away with thinner sheathing if that’s all you have.

The casters were bolted on using Timberlok lag screws. I love these screws. They have an amazing strength ratio compared to thicker lag screws. Plus, they hardly every require pre drilling to avoid splitting wood. They run around $35 for a box of 50 though, so they aren’t cheap. They last forever and you can remove them and use them on other projects if you ever decide to do something different.

 

A word about Swivel Casters!

 

After everything was screwed together we moved on to the next step. Putting on some sides. Once again we used 3/4 plywood. Each piece was cut 41″x30″.  The 41″ width allowed each end of plywood to overlap. The 30″ depth is enough to allow easy access of the grain, while still giving some side stability so our bags don’t completely fall over.

A small piece of 2×2 or 2×4( whatever was kicking around) was slapped into the internal wall corners to tie the sheathing together. Due to the nature of sheathing, the strength runs laterally. Once the walls were screwed in the feed bin was incredibly solid and we didn’t bother adding any more structural support.

A lot of things could have been done more precisely, but honestly we just wanted to build something as fast and cheaply as possibly to test our idea and see what fails. Check out the next installment when the grain finally arrives and we can see how things are looking! If you have any ideas for modifications to make this homed feed bin work even better please share in the comments below!