Home Distiller

Apple season is fast approaching and as usual I am already behind. I have a lot to do before I am ready to start picking not the least of which is to make a new apple picker. If you followed my fruity goodness thread ( http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... =7&t=48881 ) last year you may remember the pictures I took of the apple picker I made out of a coffee can, a mesh bag and a salvaged paint pole. This picker served me well for 2 years but after picking approximately 8,000-10,000 apples it was fairly worn out. I could have just got another coffee can and redone it but in all honesty it had a few shortcomings that I wanted to correct.

The first shortcoming was that it needed to be mounted mostly horizontally on the pole. This made maneuvering a bit difficult and I would frequently lose apples because they fell out rather than into the basket. So the new one needed to be more vertical so if the apple fell it would fall into the basket.

It would also need to be stronger. The old one actually pulled the bolts through the can necessitated a hasty repair to prevent that from happening again.

As luck would have it I have been working on a new vent hood for my kitchen and received some .032 stainless steel for this project. I needed to make a cutout for the fan insert which left me this nice chunk of SS to work with. I figured this was just about the perfect thing to make the new picker from.

So I made a paper template Then cut one out of aluminum tape which I used for a prototype Once satisfied with that I cut it out of SS

y next task was to roll the SS into a tube and make the hook on top and rivet it all together. After that I thought the hook was a little too flexible so I reinforced it with some of the scrap pieces, then added a reinforcing piece below the hooks so it won't need a mid season repair. The final result is this. It looks a bit more like a part from a suit of armor than an apple picker so I am calling it the apple gauntlet

And a gauntlet it would be to stop it. Very nice. I wish i had some apples....

Same here, people are always saying 'comparing apples to apples' to me......

Cranky I love building things and love reading your creative ideas but for me the apple pickers are pretty cheap to purchase and work well. One thing I think is a must is that the pole you mount it on is expandable. Having a long pole and reaching the apples just out of arms reach is a pain.

Over the pat few years I have become somewhat of an apple connoisseur. Every apple is different and every variety adds something different to a product. Most of the apple trees I pick are surrounded by blackberries so I practically need a suit of armor to pick them. I am considering getting a longer pole which will allow me to get several hundred more pounds off a single very tall tree. I am also thinking about attaching a section of dryer vent which should allow me to pick a bit faster. Speed of production is going to be a major focus for this years apples since I am hoping to increase the amount I produce once again.

Bushman wrote:Cranky I love building things and love reading your creative ideas but for me the apple pickers are pretty cheap to purchase and work well. One thing I think is a must is that the pole you mount it on is expandable. Having a long pole and reaching the apples just out of arms reach is a pain.

You are correct, the picking basket is pretty cheap now, I think the last time I tried to find one they were a lot more, enough that I made the first picker but now it is actually quite reasonable. The poles are pretty pricey though. That has been a problem, My current pole I think is extendable to 12 or 15 feet, so I can reach 15-20' pretty easily, the only problem is I can only get about halfway up some of the trees I pick. I keep looking at a 23 foot pole at Lowe's but it is $40 for the pole alone. It would allow me to reach several hundred more pounds of apples so it might be worth it but that is a large chunk of my operating budget.

cranky wrote:Over the pat few years I have become somewhat of an apple connoisseur. Every apple is different and every variety adds something different to a product. Most of the apple trees I pick are surrounded by blackberries so I practically need a suit of armor to pick them. I am considering getting a longer pole which will allow me to get several hundred more pounds off a single very tall tree. I am also thinking about attaching a section of dryer vent which should allow me to pick a bit faster. Speed of production is going to be a major focus for this years apples since I am hoping to increase the amount I produce once again.

I read your last post and all I got out of it was apple blackberry pie. Mmm. Or apple blackberry brandy. Maybe I'm just hungry.

But as I looked at your design, I had a thought, that if you took some mesh bags and made a tube the length of your picking pole, then you wouldn't have to lower the pole, just let the apples slide down the tube to your bucket. Just a randome thought. Though it would add some weight and could make it a bear to deal with in the blackberry bushes.

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ElChupacabra wrote: But as I looked at your design, I had a thought, that if you took some mesh bags and made a tube the length of your picking pole, then you wouldn't have to lower the pole, just let the apples slide down the tube to your bucket. Just a randome thought. Though it would add some weight and could make it a bear to deal with in the blackberry bushes.

That was the basic idea with the dryer vent hose but I have not done something like that because of the difficulty to maneuver around branches and the risk of getting tangled in the blackberries.

cranky wrote:It looks a bit more like a part from a suit of armor than an apple picker so I am calling it the apple gauntlet

Do the "ears" go over or under the apple being picked? Trying to get my head round the orientation...

Mikey-moo wrote:

cranky wrote:It looks a bit more like a part from a suit of armor than an apple picker so I am calling it the apple gauntlet

Do the "ears" go over or under the apple being picked? Trying to get my head round the orientation...

The ears go over the apple with the stem poking through the V so when you pull it pulls the apple at the stem and it drops into the net.
I tried to get a picture to illustrate it today. I did have to extend the ears out a bit because with the basket mounted vertical instead of sideways it is very difficult to see when you have the apple where it should be. The langer ears help in guiding and give it more area to get the stem into the V.

Look, it's a multifunctional tool. It doubles as a pear picker!

Hound Dog wrote:Look, it's a multifunctional tool. It doubles as a pear picker!

Plum picker too. I like multi taskers