OP
OldMcDonald
Platinum Member
Thank you for taking the time to respond. I do appreciate it.
Almonds have a similar covering to walnuts (both Black and English) and that is what is normally called the "hull". At least that is the word used in California, where I believe at least 80% of the world's almonds are produced, so I use Californian terminology. It is only this hull I want to remove. Again, following California, the hard case is called the "shell", so shelling (also known as cracking in some places) is the next stage to leave the edible part of the nut, and this is called the "kernel". Shelling would be done by the buyer of the de-hulled nuts.
I think pecans have a similar hull, but have never seen one whole. In California there are hulling and shelling operators to deal with the enormous quantity of nuts harvested every year, so they have very complicated machinery.
I thought there had to be some sort of auger type arrangement to move the nuts horizontally along the cage, and as you say, simple beaver tailed paddles, angled to move the nuts in the right direction. Another interesting thing about the last video is that the machine shown there has horizontal cage bars, much easier to fabricate than bending the bar to fit the circle of the cage. The top half on all of them can either be lifted or removed for access to cleaning the cage after use.
The de-huller is not supposed to break the shell, but some of the broken ones may have been damaged during harvest as well as the odd one during de-hulling. The machine shown seems to be a bit short. Longer ones - up to 10 feet appear, do a better job. Probably depends on speed of rotation and throughput I suppose. Not enough nuts and they are not in there long enough to be de-hulled, too many and they are not abraised (is that a word?) enough to take the hull off. Combine harvesters can have the same problem, and the grain is not threshed from the ears.
I do not know the reason for the water. Possibly there was a lot of dust and dirt picked up with the nuts, I should think it makes things stick to the shells rather than clean them. Odd bits of husk in with the nuts "in shell" is not a problem, because the de-hulled nuts can be run over our olive sorting table. This is a table made of round bars (the same idea as the huller) set on legs to give a slope top to bottom, olives are tipped on from the sort of boxes shown in the last video, and the damaged olives, or ones that had died and dried off before harvest, the odd leaf or twig, etc. are quickly picked off by hand. Almonds/walnuts/pecans that still had hulls attached could be removed at this stage quite easily, and either put through the de-huller again, or if they are "stick tights", another Californian expression for hulls which are stuck to the shell, just discarded.
Thanks for the remarks regarding the website. It was made by the neighbour who will be working on the project with me. He is a professional graphic designer, but would really like to be a peasant. He is young enough yet, so should end up OK.
The nutcracker looks good. I have seen a home-made one in the background of a video from either Italy or Greece that I made a note of, that works on the same principle. The hand-cranked huller looks very similar to a gadget I saw for shelling corn. I think they are dual-purpose. Simply not available here. I have not grown corn for four or five years, and had less than acre when I did, so I just shelled by hand on wet winter days.
Almonds have a similar covering to walnuts (both Black and English) and that is what is normally called the "hull". At least that is the word used in California, where I believe at least 80% of the world's almonds are produced, so I use Californian terminology. It is only this hull I want to remove. Again, following California, the hard case is called the "shell", so shelling (also known as cracking in some places) is the next stage to leave the edible part of the nut, and this is called the "kernel". Shelling would be done by the buyer of the de-hulled nuts.
I think pecans have a similar hull, but have never seen one whole. In California there are hulling and shelling operators to deal with the enormous quantity of nuts harvested every year, so they have very complicated machinery.
I thought there had to be some sort of auger type arrangement to move the nuts horizontally along the cage, and as you say, simple beaver tailed paddles, angled to move the nuts in the right direction. Another interesting thing about the last video is that the machine shown there has horizontal cage bars, much easier to fabricate than bending the bar to fit the circle of the cage. The top half on all of them can either be lifted or removed for access to cleaning the cage after use.
The de-huller is not supposed to break the shell, but some of the broken ones may have been damaged during harvest as well as the odd one during de-hulling. The machine shown seems to be a bit short. Longer ones - up to 10 feet appear, do a better job. Probably depends on speed of rotation and throughput I suppose. Not enough nuts and they are not in there long enough to be de-hulled, too many and they are not abraised (is that a word?) enough to take the hull off. Combine harvesters can have the same problem, and the grain is not threshed from the ears.
I do not know the reason for the water. Possibly there was a lot of dust and dirt picked up with the nuts, I should think it makes things stick to the shells rather than clean them. Odd bits of husk in with the nuts "in shell" is not a problem, because the de-hulled nuts can be run over our olive sorting table. This is a table made of round bars (the same idea as the huller) set on legs to give a slope top to bottom, olives are tipped on from the sort of boxes shown in the last video, and the damaged olives, or ones that had died and dried off before harvest, the odd leaf or twig, etc. are quickly picked off by hand. Almonds/walnuts/pecans that still had hulls attached could be removed at this stage quite easily, and either put through the de-huller again, or if they are "stick tights", another Californian expression for hulls which are stuck to the shell, just discarded.
Thanks for the remarks regarding the website. It was made by the neighbour who will be working on the project with me. He is a professional graphic designer, but would really like to be a peasant. He is young enough yet, so should end up OK.
The nutcracker looks good. I have seen a home-made one in the background of a video from either Italy or Greece that I made a note of, that works on the same principle. The hand-cranked huller looks very similar to a gadget I saw for shelling corn. I think they are dual-purpose. Simply not available here. I have not grown corn for four or five years, and had less than acre when I did, so I just shelled by hand on wet winter days.
