We had an Idea.
We stirred seeds in a bowl while blowing over them with a hair dryer. Hulls flew everywhere - in our eyes, on our clothes, all over the driveway. There had to be a better way.
For thousands of years, mankind has been separating "the wheat from the chaff". Just throw the seed up in the air 10 or 20 times on a windy day and try to catch it on the way down before it hits the ground.
Aside from only working on windy days, it takes some real skill (and a large flying saucer-like device) to catch the seed - not to mention all the hulls that you have to clean up from the ground when you're done.
Still the idea of using air to separate the seed from the hulls seemed like the way to go.
Eureka !!!
With this in mind, we began designing a device that could be attached to any 1-1/4" home vacuum cleaner hose (a Eureka, perhaps) or to a small, inexpensive vacuum cleaner such as the $27 "Stinger" wet/dry vac from Home Depot (specify Item #181763).
After months of experimenting and spending thousands of dollars to build and test several different prototypes, one afternoon...
IT WORKED, IT WORKED, IT WORKED !!!
With our home vacuum connected to its top, the hulls and chaff were sucked away while the clean, whole seed poured steadily into the bucket.
I'm not sure, but I think we went dancing down the street scaring a few dogs and cats in the process.
We could pour the seed (which would normally have been thrown away) into this device and good, reusable bird seed would rain down out of the device ready to be fed to our birds again.
It was like getting free seed!
We were ecstatic.
I know it sounds like boasting, but we can honestly say that every time we use the Seed-Saver, we are always astonished at its outstanding performance.
Then, as a finishing touch, we added a valve to adjust it's performance for varying seed sizes and vacuum strength.