paul_taylor21•27d agoProlific Poster

Dropped $40 on a soil sifter for my dig site and it saved my back

Been digging test pits near Austin and got tired of bending over to hand-sift. Bought one of those mesh screen sifters from a hardware store for $40 and it cut my screening time in half. Anyone else tried one of these or just stick with the old bucket method?

3 comments

3 Comments

finley_gonzalez4927d ago

well I'm going to disagree with you here. buying a fancy sifter for 40 bucks feels like a shortcut that skips the whole point of what we're doing. I've been digging in central Texas for years and the bucket method with a simple window screen has never failed me. the time you save with that store-bought sifter you spend on cleaning it out when the mesh clogs up with clay. plus you lose that connection to the dirt, you miss the tiny flakes of chert and charcoal that tell you you're onto something good.

wendy13127d ago

Wait, have you actually used one of those store-bought sifters in our kind of soil? I read a post on a Texas archaeology forum where a guy said the same thing about the clay clogging up the mesh, but he ended up spraying it with cooking oil first and it helped a LOT. Not saying you're wrong about the bucket method being tried and true, but my back is just GONE after a day of bending over with a screen. That $40 saved me from buying a bunch of pain relievers, so I'm calling it a win either way.

vera_johnson927d ago

wendy, you mentioned that cooking oil trick and I gotta call that out - that's not great advice for our kind of digging. Oil on a sifter mesh will attract dust and dirt way faster, and it'll gum up the whole thing after a few uses. I've seen guys try that in the field and it just makes a sticky mess that's harder to clean than the clay ever was. The real fix for clay soil is to knock the screen on the ground every few shakes, not spray it with anything. Your back point is fair though, I feel you on that. Maybe look into a frame that sits higher off the ground so you're not hunched over so much. That $40 could go toward a better setup instead of a sifter that's gonna fight you in this dirt.