Thread: Project Special K

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Well now that we have great weather again, I'm finishing a bunch of small projects, to clear way for the truck. I had bought an antique apple press made by Keystone, with a 1875 Patent stamp on it. Last year we used it to make apple cider, but even though we cleaned it as much as possible, the juice still had rust residue in it, from all the cast iron parts. So I decided to take it apart and coated everything cast iron with Por-15. Then the parts that came in contact with the actual juice, I put a enamel coat of a food grade paint over the Por-15 . The paint was hard to find, and only came in "gondola red" which looks like "puke orange " to me, so I left everything out side Black. When I was unassembling the top hopper/crusher, I found that who ever took it apart last had reassembled the housing wrong. As a result the Hopper is now too narrow for the shute under it. So I'll next be making a new hopper out of some cabinet grade plywood, and also will be making the juice shute out of new wood, that can be treated with a food grade clear urethane. Once it is done, we should have some high grade apple juice this summer, which will be made into hard cider too.
While it was apart, I had to make a new main post for the press side of the apple press. One leg is newer made of some nice oak, but the other leg was rotted at the base, which caused problems during pressing last year. It's cool looking at this thing, it was just so well made originally! The fly wheel alone is massive and weighs a ton! Anyway once this is done, I'll be back to the truck!