Peter Montague

The average price seems to be around 2$ an ounce. 8oz bottle 16$. But it's all about presentation. Label, packaging, photos etc... So make a lot at once to keep the labor hours down. If you haven't read the blog post I did you should. It's certainly not the
Most well written article ever but I did my homework and had grate results. It's funny no ones curing times or temps for walnuts are the same.

Haven't marketed it yet but there is a functioning web store on my site and it will be on my etsy page as well. Teh ink that is nearly done just needs the addition of gum Arabic. I got small glass bottles from ULINE and need to have stamps made for te labels. Looking at three different products, hair dye, ink and wood stain. I got my eye on a triple burner propane stove for less than 50$ on amazon so my room mates don't have to deal with the mess. Included is a wonderful drawing my friend Emily Garfield did. Very talented, look up her stuff.

I get distracted easy with projects so now I'm on acorns . Found some trees that are still dropping, never new you can get oil from them. Hopefully next week I can prototype the nut cracker. My goal is all 1,400 walnuts cracked in 10 minutes!

You might be able to get a antique corn husker on eBay for less than the new one. I looked last month and there where over 20 for sale. As long as the nuts and bolts aren't frozen (or you can replace them yourself) on the spring that controls the crushing pressure your good to go.

This fall I discovered that folks post there unwanted nut crops on craigslist. Almost got some butternuts but they had already been put in the trash. I now have a calendar event on my phone for oct 1 2014 with his email as the todo.

Jerry Ward wrote: I have 6-8 large black walnut trees on my property and would like to know how to process them to at least get the green outer husk off of them. Everything I've heard they are difficult and they stain.

I'm curious Jerry, what did you end up doing?

Cortland Satsuma wrote: Question about once they are blackened: Can you still process them for eating? We only have one in our forest (a squirrel planting?); I gathered a paper bag full with the intent of the low tech approach of driving over them and forgot to get back to them. When I realized it, they were black. So I have a bag of "now what?!" lol

They are fine. I have personally done tests and never seen the rotting hull penetrate the shell. Many even Waite till they are black because of how easy they are to deal with.

I made a lot of ink and stain last month. Half the stain will be thickened to make hair dye. The hulls worked extremely well for this. I still have 25 gallons of hulls to process. Why do all my interests involve so much work

Hi all you permies! I've been obsessing about this topic for a while. I think I've red every forum discussion, article, publication, blog post and watched every video on the internet while doing my research on processing black walnuts. I processed about 1,400 this year and did a thorough wright up here http://lynwooddesigns.com/blog.html I've found the two most important pieces of equipment are a antique corn husker to remove the hulls and a corded drill with a large mixing paddle installed. I was hulling, cleaning and laying out to dry at a rate of 400 an hour. Figuring out this work flow has made the process less daunting. If you had one person hulling and one cleaning with this work flow you could easily do 20,000 nuts. Shelling has been a point of contention for me. I shudder at the thought of cracking 1,400 nuts one at a time. The only "home owner" machine that can do it quickly is the drill cracker and it's nearly 500$. I did find the universal nut sheller by the full belly project which you cast in concrete your self but saw little data on its use with black walnuts and it also is over 400$. This is because you get a reusable fiberglass mold. This product is designed for 3rd world reproduction and distribution. I'm currently working on concrete model that will be able to shell black walnuts, pine nuts and everything in between. In the upcoming weeks I'll be doing the first castings and a finished product will hopefully be up for sale by Christmas. The basic idea is you open the box and poor in concrete. It of course will involve a few more steps than that but you can see where I'm going with this, dead simple and totally effective is the goal. I'm looking forward to having this sheller next fall and expanding into acorns as well as other nuts. I think this http://www.amazon.com/Piteba-Nut-Seed-Expeller-press/dp/B004H2SDTM would make a good companion machine. I watched some videos of folks making acorn oil. Of course I'm now thinking about grinding grain. This is a problem I have, one obsession turns into 10 projects!