This was an email I sent to Jock Brandis, creater of the peanut sheller we recently installed in the community of Valle de Esmeralda, Petén, Guatemala. They have their own blog as well!
Full Belly Blog

I think you know the basics. The group from North Carolina brought the machine through customs here without hassles, and I met them at the airport with the Spanish school that we organised the contact through.
Despite a few communication problems (I wanted the machine parts transported to Antigua, as without a vehicle it was a difficult task for me) we eventually got the parts there. The US$50 excess baggage fee was compensated through me by the women by paying for a meal for the travellers in a restaurant here in Antigua.

Fast forward a couple of months, during which I was working here in Antigua, but I managed to mail the two boxes to the community in Petén, and they were collected and stored in the “factory” there. On about the 18th of May, I made my two or three-monthly visit to the community, had our normal meeting, unveiled the parts, and we started construction the next day (21st, I believe).

Day 1:

• We used a basic 50-50% mix of sand and cement
• Bought a little extra plastic for the small mould (not included)
• Used cooking margarine used by one of the women who also makes bread in the community to grease the moulds
• Let stand for 24 hours

Day 2:

• Removed the rotor with little difficulty from the mould
• Scoured the inner surface of the stator with the back cog of a bicycle gear
• Constructed the lathe mould from spare wood
• Scoured and “evened” the rotor with the same bicycle cog until concentric
• Let stand for another 24 hours

Day 3:

• Removed the stator from the mould with little difficulty
• Mounted the top metal bracket concentric on the stator
• “Dropped” the stator in far too forcefully and then removed it after 15 minutes
• Attempted to centre the bottom metal bracket with a little difficulty
• The rotor ended up a little off centre, or at least not even with all the stator surfaces, don’t know if this is normal or not
•  The attempt to mount the bottom of the stator on two pieces of wood proved a little difficult, as the four bent screws were exposed with far too little length to mount on thick wood, and we had no tools to indent a hole to allow the nuts to pass in the wood, as shown in the assembly photos.
  I would recommend with the internet instruction that you at least specify the end function of the screws embedded in the cement, to allow an estimate of how much to leave exposed out from the cement.
• We eventually mounted the machine on a wooden “horse”, which will allow the inner nuts and shells to drop into a tub which we can remove and change over with ease

Our hiccups

• Not knowing the function of screws we were putting in to the cement moulds
• Not having a full list of things we would need before starting: (For example, the lathe to plane the rotor, pieces of wood to attached to the bottom of the stator, glue, tools, etc.)
• Putting the rotor into the stator with nothing to support the stator, or a “stopper” to prevent the rotor from wedging between the two
• Problems with centring the bottom thread of the rotor, and the rotor dropping through the top thread when we righted the machine
• Threads too short to support decent thickness of wood to mount the machine on the drum

Otherwise, the process was quite smooth. I amazed myself with my problem-solving skills, to be quite honest, the problems were quite easily overcome, with nothing but internet instructions printed out to go on.
 
I had at least two women watching the assembly process at all times, so I hope they would be able to do it by themselves (pending the above changes to the instructions, and translations into Spanish).
They were also very impressed, I think, by the ease of function of the machine, we did hardly any adjustment, having the handle on the lowest possible setting of the rotor (thinnest possible passage, right?). The only problem with this is that the small stature of Mayan women means that they will probably have to be standing on a block or something to turn the crank, as it is at about head-height for them, and perhaps their arms will have problems clearing the central threaded-rotor.

I have a friend that took a good grab of the interesting parts of the construction, and of course the finished product. I also took a couple, but with the old-fashioned film that you’re going to have to wait for processing.

As I stated in my previous emails, the next step is to find the best way of making the technology available to other communities.
Basically this means we are left with a few steps to be completed, which I sincerely believe do not require any more funds.

1. Finding a cheap and reliable way of replicating the metal parts (these will be supplied at cost)
2. Finding a reliable way of getting the moulds and instructions to communities from my base here in Antigua (more or less a central point of contact to communities – the capital is only 1 hour by public bus away)
   This is a tougher one, I think a deposit system is the way to go here, when the moulds are returned, so will be the money.

There is also the potential to get a quote for another set of moulds at a fibre-glass workshop here, now that we have the originals available. I honestly think this will be a manageable task.

That’s all for now. If any of the people from your part of the world make it down here, I would be only too happy to take them to the community to see your project in action. I would also like to send you a couple of jars of peanut butter.

Yours in solidarity,
Tomas Triglone