apple smasher

[schnell]

I saw a picture in a book about colonial era Americans smashing apples with a stone wheel in a circular trough. There was a center post and it had some sort of U-joint and bearing attached to an axle for the crushing wheel. Someone walked around the circle pushing the axle to provide power while others loaded the trough and unloaded the pulp to place it in a press.

There's a stone cutting place near my house that makes stuff out of cut stone large and small. It occured to me that I could make a similar, though smaller apparatus, without an unreasonable amount of effort. One option is to make it small enough to travel to and from an orchard with the press in season. This way the pressed fruit can be left as compost in the orchard and I don't have to transport anything but the juice (and some extra large super heavy primitive machines).

Anyone seen anything like this before?

[Ugly]

I've seen a stone wheel in a circular trough and screw type presses, you can often find examples at the local pioneer museums here in Canada and the US. Seems like a very clumsy way to go about it with the advent of electricity; hydraulic pumps and motors for 12vdc and 120/240vac . If apples were that much work I'd feed them to the deer. I picked up a garburetor at the dump and fashioned new blades for it from stainless scraps, be easy enough to transport that and a small electric hydraulic press. Or even a manual hydraulic press for that matter.

Juice is quite heavy, water weighs 1K per L so to haul any amount you need a truck or decent trailer.

[junkyard dawg]

I mounted a garbage disposal into a half of a keg... A sink would work too, I just had a bunch of kegs...

It works great for smashing apples. You might have to cut them a little to get 'em to fit, and it needs some cooling rests, but its an easy and cheap apple crusher. Youtube has some videos if you need ideas...