Dehulling walnuts with a corn sheller???

My wife gathered a bunch of walnuts & wants to de hull them. Has anybody tried using one of those hand crank corn shellers that you mount to a work bench. I don't have one or I would try it but if anybody has ever done this and it will work I'll go buy one. Thanks Gerald

Put them in a burlap bag and drive over them roll the sack over a couple times and drive over them again works quite well.

Pete

I don't see why a concrete mixer wouldn't work.

I use a cement mixer on black walnuts.

If you find a scrap board and drill a few holes slightly larger than the nuts in the shell. Put a block on each end to hold it up. Or lay it across a five gallon bucket. Just drive each one thru the hole with a mallet to de hull it. Works pretty good.

Years ago Posted a set up where you made a shoot out of a few boards and jacked up a car and set it under the tire and then feed the walnuts into the shoot and the tire would take the hulls off. The page I posted was very old and I got it from my grand father when we got the 1935 JD B I have

I used one a long time ago but a free standing model. Worked OK, broke a few larger ones and smaller ones didn't clean up well. A lot of hull debris stayed inside and needed a lot of hosing to get it cleaned out. If you have one it can't hurt to at least try it.

I used to do it with a stationary single hole New Idea unit. Didnt even have a motor just used the flywheel to spin it around. Worked fine for it.

I wait until the hulls turn black and mushy then I put the nuts in a plastic milk crate and clean them with my pressure washer. After they dry you can handle them without getting black stains on your hands. Let them cure for a couple of weeks, the nutmeats shrink a little and are much easier to get out of the shell. Been there, done that. Sam Womer(PA)

so i have question for everyone, if gmccool is willing to go out and buy a hand corn sheller to de-hull walnuts, why not just go buy a walnut de-huller? These things do exist dont they?

Who says gmccool is "willing to go out and buy" anything? Maybe gmccool already has a hand crank corn sheller?

I think people are using "de-hulling" to mean two different things here. De-hulling a walnut is removing the soft outer "fruit" that covers the shell. I think people are using "de-hulling" to describe removing the meat from the shell.

I think fixerupper just did that... post was on Tales maybe.

I don't know about Walnuts but last year our Pecan crop (800 Pounds) hard an abundance of hulls that didn't free the nut. I put them in our little (1 Cubic Foot)gas cement mixer and got three products: nuts, hulls and an a major dust storm. LOL

Barnyard Engineering, maybe Gmccool does have a corn sheller, but I dont think so. If you go re-read his initial post again (a bit more carefully) he says he
would go out and buy one if anyone here out in posterland has had success with walnuts using one.

Gerald if a small bench sheller does not work out you can search marketplace and can probably come up with an old hand crank sheller like the ones that used to sit beside the corn crib. I found an old rickety wood framed one 60 miles away. It worked great, only problem was my stamina didn't work so good so I rigged up a motor. The husked walnuts came out the end and fell into a tub of water. The good walnuts sank the husks and undesirable walnuts floated to the top. Every so often I would need to skim the husks and floaters. After they dried spread out on my trailer for a few days I threw them into an old clothes dryer and tumbled them for a half hour or so with no heat though I don't see why low heat won't hurt them. Warning! Do not use your wife's clothes dryer if you don't want to sleep in the garage for a week! They came out nice and smooth. Now they are laying on a sheet of plywood with a fan blowing on them. I did about 150 pounds of finished walnuts and it took longer gathering the equipment and setting up than it did running them through. Super99 posted a picture of a neat walnut picker upper that works real slick if you really want to get into it.

It was nice to visit with you at Shelby. Hope to see you next year.


This post was edited by fixerupper on 10/21/2021 at 02:07 pm.

Yes, I personally have used the hand crank, clamp on a workbench type all cast iron ear corn sheller.
The one we used had a tension spring that allow the funnel to expand to suit the fat ness of the ear corn.
You might need a can or two of spinach in yer belly after six bushels or so.

We did as old has described when we had a pickup box heaped load to do.

This post was edited by DoubleO7 on 10/21/2021 at 02:36 pm.