Cracking hazelnuts

What do you think is the most efficient method of cracking hazelnuts? We have a hand crank cracker, but I am thinking that hitting them with a hammer might be more efficient.

I find that hitting them with a hammer often endup with smashed nut meat,

This is the one I like to use and it works on all the nuts I have tried it with, a lever nutcraker:



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutcracker

For larger numbers of nuts I was told a Dave Built cracker works well.

A homesteader who shells a lot of hazelnuts suggested using a big rubber washer to contain the nut and a hammer in a metal baking dish.  I think the washer the size of a garden hose washer but but thicker.  Mess stays in the pan as you do a bunch of nuts.

hammer can be fine once you get a feel for it, it’s gotta be the right kind of light-but-firm tap or you either do nothing or crush the nutmeats. a davebilt (or other cranked) cracker set to the right width is definitely more efficient. you might split some nutmeats but you can’t smash them.

I use a stone mortar and pestle. You can put in a handful at a time and give the lot of them a few sharp taps to crack them all open.  Much easier on the hands than cracking one by one.

We do the wood mallet in a cast iron pan method. We use a "bumper" made from the gaskets on the end of water filter cartridges. We glued 2 of these together to get the thickness we wanted. If you have bigger hazelnuts, you could try a stack of 3 of these gaskets. Here's a link to an old video I did using this method. We have switched to using a cast iron skillet to contain the nuts, and only use 1 "bumper" at a time as it's faster. The nuts come out mostly whole or halved, with a few getting broken into smaller pieces.