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Have any good tips for cracking? I have some local pine trees with large, tasty nuts. But it is such a hassle to separate the nut's meat from the shell. Right

Have any good tips for cracking? I have some local pine trees with large, tasty nuts. But it is such a hassle to separate the nut's meat from the shell. Right now I am just using a hammer and the cement pavement to break the thick shells individually without smooshing the meat. I have heard of a technique where you do not care about smooshing the meat, you just crush the whole nut, shell and all, and place all the nuts in liquid. The shells supposedly float while the meat sinks. I have never tried that though. I am open to any suggestions to make my foraging more efficient.

mytailorisrich 5y ago
My experience is you need to find the right amount of force in order to crack the shell without smashing it. As a child I found that the right tool helped: too big a rock and everything is smashed, too small and it's not cracked at all, but you can find the right one that nicely crack the shell by taping it on the nut.
- prpl 5y ago
  yes - we had a specific hammer that worked pretty reliably where the potential energy from a light swing was close to perfect. You could use the hammer end of a splitting wedge too, but you had to be a bit lighter on the touch. Of course, the smaller nuts were always harder to crack.
prpl 5y ago
That sort of depends - it is fairly traditional to roast in-shell (which makes the shell more brittle) and use rocks/hammer/teeth. This guy has a de-sheller/crusher, if you want to see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_Si67R1BjY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_Si67R1BjY I would probably try to sort/bin by size (shake through progressively larger holes/screens, might need to fabricate something), then run it through the crusher, then again screen To expand a bit more, probably dual steel plates with fixed spacers (based on bin size) in a hydraulic press would be best. Roasting/dehydrating/waiting makes the shells brittle and would make that process easier probably.
iudqnolq 5y ago
My grandfather would crack walnuts in a large vise. It's not the right tool but it gives you much finer control and reproducibility than a hammer.
arminiusreturns 5y ago
I learned from the local Nde how to gather, (traditionally a female activity while the males hunted) and what they do is do a light cracking of many nuts at once on a mill stone usually after toasting, more in a long pull across the surface than a smash, then toss the pile around letting the wind or manual blowing to get rid of the husks. Of course in hurry just use your teeth.

mytailorisrich 5y ago

My experience is you need to find the right amount of force in order to crack the shell without smashing it. As a child I found that the right tool helped: too big a rock and everything is smashed, too small and it's not cracked at all, but you can find the right one that nicely crack the shell by taping it on the nut.

prpl 5y ago
yes - we had a specific hammer that worked pretty reliably where the potential energy from a light swing was close to perfect. You could use the hammer end of a splitting wedge too, but you had to be a bit lighter on the touch. Of course, the smaller nuts were always harder to crack.

prpl 5y ago

That sort of depends - it is fairly traditional to roast in-shell (which makes the shell more brittle) and use rocks/hammer/teeth. This guy has a de-sheller/crusher, if you want to see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_Si67R1BjY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_Si67R1BjY I would probably try to sort/bin by size (shake through progressively larger holes/screens, might need to fabricate something), then run it through the crusher, then again screen To expand a bit more, probably dual steel plates with fixed spacers (based on bin size) in a hydraulic press would be best. Roasting/dehydrating/waiting makes the shells brittle and would make that process easier probably.

iudqnolq 5y ago

My grandfather would crack walnuts in a large vise. It's not the right tool but it gives you much finer control and reproducibility than a hammer.

arminiusreturns 5y ago

I learned from the local Nde how to gather, (traditionally a female activity while the males hunted) and what they do is do a light cracking of many nuts at once on a mill stone usually after toasting, more in a long pull across the surface than a smash, then toss the pile around letting the wind or manual blowing to get rid of the husks. Of course in hurry just use your teeth.