chazz,
You're right, unless you've got a very small drill with a short bit you need to drill from the outside of the bucket. I have found that just rubbing my hand or a cloth around the inside after drilling will remove a lot of the burrs. The other thing you could try would be to reem out the holes from the inside using a much larger twist drill or the tang of a metal file or rasp.
good luck,
Harry

Yes deburr using either a short "much larger twist drill" or a chamfer tool. Another method might be a bit of beartex on a split rod on a dremel or air tool. This would make it all nice and pretty and not chop up the worms. Each worm you save is important to quickly multiply your system size. Plus the bins will show good workmanship. Maybe the plastic could be melted to smooth it out or even make the holes.

I have thought about this subject myself and looked at the large scale harvesting equipment and figured they must be pretty tough. Have you seen those big worm trommels?

Yeah, I have seen those trommels and I feel so sorry for the worms.
My worm farm is still manageable with manual harvesting so I've got happy worms.
We don't really know what kind of shock they experienced since they can't make a sound.

Now, I start to wonder also, what happens if a worm gets wounded? We (or I) really don't think too much about 1 or several worms getting hurt because we got thousand others and we can't really distinguish one worm from the other. How sad. I hope I won't be a worm in my next life. )<:>

Worms have some insane regeneration capabilities being able to regrow much of their body after being diced. Sure it probably isnt pleasant for the worm but better than the final option.

Note that I am not advocating worm carnage on the assumption that they can recover just that I dont think a burr in a plastic pail is going to do much in terms of taking down the colony.

First things first: otis11_gw: Note: I used my first and second "Like". To the rest of you... I am fairly non into "Like's" so don't be expecting any. :-)

I use my wood burning electric thingy. I am 73 and don't have a lot of strength to hold the drills. It melts the holes so no rough edges.

Hi Sharon, I would only caution that if you melt holes in a plastic container that it is done outdoors with attention as to staying upwind. Burning plastic gives off some real nasties that are not good to breathe. Kudos to you for finding a way to get that done within your abilities though.

As far as the rough edges, I have to wonder if it really matters? Think of everything else in the bin like broken eggshells.

Worms crawl around looking for sharp edges in the bin which they rub up against to scrape the ova (cocoons) off their neck areas when nature tells them it's time to get busy again. That's why you'll almost always find cocoons around stuff like eggshells, or bits of hard stuff, or the edges of plastic created when we drill holes in bins.

chuckiebtoo

When I first started with a bin it was plastic and I made holes side, bottom top. But since then I dont make holes although when I stacked a second tray I chose windows to holes but since then Ive taped over the windows and make no holes in the upper trays. Ok stop and think a minute about the worm factories, there are no holes in the sides only the mesh bottom holes in each tray. So in copying that aspect after a harvest of each tray I decided to cut out the bottoms and leave a 2-3" lip for placing hardware cloth which is 1/4" mesh. So thats how my tiered bins are now no side holes or even holes in the lid just the bottom mesh screening. I also dont have any kind of catchall pan under the bottom tray as I dont have any drainage perhaps using enough browns in the bedding is reason for that. At any rate my worms are happy and not complaining about not having enough aeration. I do though keep my top lid barely cracked and everything seems to be going fine in the bins. They are eating all the food I put in there without so much as a worm trail on the lid.

As for the "like" button I see no point in it so dont expect it from me.

Back to the original paragraph about the beginning when I drilled holes I did use rasps, round file, filing stone whatever I had to smooth off the burrs. Like others have mentioned I didnt want to get off to a bad start with a massive kill off, but that was then and this is now and I have made a few adjustments as mentioned above which seem to be for the good.

Thanks nexev for info in using that tool inside. For the life of me I could not think of the word"tool" so wrote thingy lol. You are right about breathing the fumes from the burning plastic, it smells awful. Very few worms ever ventured up that high and I think if they hit a burr they would move away from it. I don't make holes anymore, I leave lids off and cover with damp newspaper. Worms love corn cobs, after they finish eating off the cob I leave the cobs in. Like chuckie said they like to rub against something to scrap the cocoon off. I find lots of cocoons on old corn cobs, then the babies hang around on the cob for awhile. They also like avocado shells. Don't know why but the shells are full of worms.