As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
Paul shared this invention back in May and it scheduled here and I appreciate genius like this as this is something I probably better put together, even if this is apple growing country, but I seem to have lots of apple trees planted.
Picked up an old cider press a few years ago and refurbished it. I press a lot of cider from my two large apple trees... think I did around 32 bushels last year. If I have an off season, I have a friend who has an orchard that he doesn't harvest anymore and I get whatever I want from that. I made an apple crusher (basically a motor powered wooden cylinder with stainless wood screws sticking out about 3/8" in two V patterns wrapping around the cylinder). It works incredibly well. I put a 5gal pail of apples through it in under a minute. I only press about 3/4 of a pail of mash at a time. Seems to work better that way. Just need to add an idler pulley under spring tension to keep tension on the belt. A friend got the plans off the internet somewhere (it was entirely made of wood) and I made a few improvements.. steel shaft, bearings, etc. Runs around 7-8 hundred rpm.I get a LOT of mash left over. It used to go into the compost, but now I'm thinking it might be a good supplemental food for the chickens
Nothing I have would ever look this nice. My first thought though for others was this:
This is a silage cutter. Probably every area still has some of these in some farmer's trees. the red part out front is what the corn was fed into the cutters, which is the back thing which has knives on it, and it blows the silage out the chute into a trailer. Yes is pretty high octane for just apples, but something like this would haul ass. It also is great for cutting fingers off people as my neighbor is missing one of his.
I could go to JYG and get the pulley and shaft off of some implement, but if I can find a small silage cutter, I could alter it to have a hopper to dump apples into, and then a direct blower to feed the pulp into something like a metal barrel, like I used for wood stove.
This is really a great idea. I always marvel at places that have wild nut trees, wild apples, wild peaches as nothing grows here even with care. Need water for that.
Another project I'm going to have to work on after some other of my wood projects are completed.
Nuff Said
agtG