Cheap Press Thread!

I see all these guys asking about other ways to extract juice from apples, I assume because of the sticker shock they get when they google "apple press" for price quotes. Some of these poor souls even decide to juice over a bushel of apples in a counter top juicer! I know there are plenty of threads about press builds, but couldn't find any good ones for cheap/easy/simple/effective builds. Thought this might be a good contribution to this forum for those of us who couldn't imagine dropping a few hundred bucks on a press, have a local home brew shop that want's an arm and a leg to rent their press (mine want's 80 bucks a day), are more concerned about functionality than aesthetics, and are maybe not that mechanically inclined. So post your cheap presses for us all to see!

Heres mine (in progress). Alright sashurlow, I'm using you're awesome press as a blue print for my build. In all, it should only cost 60-70 bucks when it's all said and done, and that's including lumber, bolts, basket, tub, and jack.

Used white pine 2x4s and plan on buying a trailer jack and using a 2.5 gallon paint bucket with holes drilled as the pressing basket. Oh, and I'm gonna need to enlarge the base where the basket is going to be sitting. Here's what I got so far though. I'll post more pics as I make progress.

Good show - I am thinking of making something along these lines, but I suck at carpentry. The REALLY cheap option would just be to get two breadboards and put bolts at each corner and just screw them down each a turn at a time. Might not be too bad for the first 20-30 pounds. Thing is, I can buy a nice compact fruit press round these parts for less than $100, so it hardly seems worth making one...

I'm gonna keep an eye on this one, and maybe be able to get something put together for next year


-Kingboomer

markowe said:

Good show - I am thinking of making something along these lines, but I suck at carpentry. The REALLY cheap option would just be to get two breadboards and put bolts at each corner and just screw them down each a turn at a time. Might not be too bad for the first 20-30 pounds. Thing is, I can buy a nice compact fruit press round these parts for less than $100, so it hardly seems worth making one...

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See, I'm down in Albuquerque and have been searching up and down with no luck for anything under 170 bucks. Probably why my LHBS knows they can charge so much for renting their press. And I thought about the board press, but by the time I bought oak plywood and made a triple or quad decker, I'd already have 40-50 bucks in lumber. Not to mention the bolts.

it's more fun building **** on your own anyway! diy or die

*stuff. just learned that you cant swear on here, hah

Ues more than one 2x4 for the upper brace. I cracked my two 2x4 top brace and will be replacing it with two 2x6 brace that extends past the uprights (for more wood around the bolt hole). Definately add more of a base. Since you will be mounting the trailer jack to one side, the base will be on that side. My aluminum pasta straining basket got rather smushed and distorted on the bottom so I am going to be replacing that with an oak wood slatted basket. I'll worry about that during the winter as my cider is bubbling away for the year. Your plastick bucket will either work nicely or you will destroy a small priced item and learn from it. Who knew that a trailer jack could be that friggin destructive.
Thanks for stealing my idea... Its a genuine honor.

Yea, I glued two 2x4s together for the top and bottom brace. Hopefully the glue will add some strength, but if not, I'll just have to shell out the extra dough for an oak 2x4 doubled up for the top brace. What kind of wood did you use?

i just saw a picture of an antique one, the basket was square. might be a lot easier making it that way - won't need to make or buy the circular metal hoops. you could brace the basket with wood even

I was thinking of just cutting out a round piece of 1/2 inch oak plywood. Should be easy enough. Oh, and as for the top brace, I was thinking about just cutting plywood into 4 inch strips and stacking them to 3.5 inches thick, gluing them, and screwing them together. Pine plywood would even be stronger than an oak 4x4.

Is plywood a good idea? There is the glue, and various other treatments. Not sure you want that mingling with your apples..?

markowe said:

Is plywood a good idea? There is the glue, and various other treatments. Not sure you want that mingling with your apples..?

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A buddy of mine brought that up... Good thing my dad is a painting contractor, because I think a coat of epoxy should remedy that problem. What kind of boards do they use in those simple board presses? I always just assumed that it was some kind of hardwood plywood board.

You can get roughsawn oak 2x4s from old (free) pallets. Awesome idea for thread too. Excellent idea!

Really? Round here all the pallets I have ever found have been pine.

I got mine from a local independent home improvement place. Got 6 2x4x12's out of one pallet. Might be oak is more prevailent in PA/ east coast? Worth a shot at those prices though..

Yep, douglas fir cept for the center brace board, which is oak. Cept it's all notched out, so no good for me, but the doug fir might be useful. Certainly better than white pine.

And yea, I would imagine oak just being more prevalent on the east coast, so probably cheaper.

I am planning on building a press from an old stainless steel kitchen sink I got from a friend (no charge) and I am thinking of getting some steel channel for the frame from my work. Hopefully I can get some scrap peices for cheap. I plan on using plastic cutting board as a press and reinforcing it, probably with some 2x4s, some 4x4s, or maybe some more channel.

The hard part is going to be making the apple crusher...

Devo9 said:

The hard part is going to be making the apple crusher...

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Haven't tried it yet, but I'm thinking of just tossing my frozen apples into a bucket, getting the lid, drilling a hole into it, and slipping it over a mortar mixer bit and mixing it with a drill.

Anyone see anything wrong with that?

Alright, finally got a little more expendable cash together. I only put 2 bolts on the bottom of the jack so it had more meat to grab, and also added 1 1/2 inches of plywood for more strength. Made the disk out of 4 1//4 inch plywood peices I glued together. I plan on coating the disk in epoxy so I don't have any problems with it contacting the cider (since it's pine plywood).

Oh. and so far I have 60 bucks sunk into all of it. That includes lumber, bolts, glue, and jack. Building a tray as well as I'm posting this. I'll post a pic of that tomorrow when it's light out though.