Metal Enforced Big Handle Nutcracker

Last crawled date: 4 years, 2 months ago

As we harvest around 130 liters of walnuts every year, we deal them out a lot. Lately included with a self-printed nutcracker, just for the fun of it.
We tried out some of the designs here, but for my mother (87 years of age, still going stroing) I needed one that feels smoother in her hands (especially the handle) and uses less force to crack a nut.
Enter my design, a press with a big handle and M30 screw size. It combines some things found here with my own wishes. The underside, for instance, has a 43 mm diameter curvature. That is, as you might know, the average diameter of all real walnuts.
To assemble the handle, you need some M3 socket head cap bolts: 2x 25 mm (top), 1x 20 mm (middle) and 1x 12 mm (bottom). You can use three standard nuts, but I prefer lock nuts - the design has room for those.
After you have printed both sides of the handle, the best way to assemble looks like this:
Screw the two 25 mm and the 20 mm bolt into the correct (!) half of the handle, just to the point where they come out at the flat surface.
Lay both halfs on their back (flat surface up), apply a little glue on both surfaces and let it dry for 5 minutes.
Put the two halfs neatly together and right away screw in the three bolts to secure the alignment.
Put the nuts in their holes and screw the whole thing firmly together. Make sure that head and nut of the 20 mm bolt are inside the screw thread.
Screw the 12 mm bolt into the underside of the handle, with a drop of glue first. It will rest against the 20 mm bolt and should stick out from the bottom just a little bit.
The first times you operate the handle, it probably won't turn equally smooth over the full length. Turn it in and out a few times (full length) to smoothen the run.
You'll find three designs for the box. They're all the same except for the text. The one with the Dutch text is only for people from one of the three Dutch villages called Den Ham (OV, GR or UT).
The box has a small round niche at the bottom, diameter 26 mm, height 2.4 mm. It happens to fit a 2 euro piece perfectly. Now, when you crack a nut, it's metal against metal! And when you put in the 2 euro piece yourself before giving it away, you can tell the donee it's a gift of real value :D.