They always say, "Necessity is the Mother of invention"... I wanted a relatively easy way to press apples for juice or cider. I found a number of options on the internet as well as some pretty cool designs on this forum. I thought I'd share the one I built this week. I used two food grade poly cutting boards as pressing plates. They are screwed to a stronger wood backing plate. I use a couple of gate hinges, 'U' bolts, and misc. hardware for assembly. I then used a pipe flange and a 12" pipe for the "push rod". The most expensive part was having the stainless steel catch tray fabricated. The whole unit attaches to my old log splitter by using a couple of turn buckles on the lower rear of the back plate. It takes less than 5 minutes to put on or take off the splitter.
Here's what it looks like with the pressing plate opened up.
Here's a bag of ground apples ready to be pressed.
The initial pressing is done by hand by just pushing down on the pipe until it's aligned with the splitter wedge.
After pressing.
I still have some minor "tweaking" to do, but so far am pretty pleased with how easy and quick it is to press apples. I was also pleased that considering how old and oily my splitter is, there was "0" contamination to the apple juice.
