I had a relative who took half sheet of plywood cut it in half built a rim inside the one half. Filled the rimmed piece wwith unhulled nuts . put the filled piece with unhulled back walnuts. place the filled piece on the driveway cover the filled piece with the other half sheet of plywood. drove over it multiple times to get the hulls to come off. dried the hulled nuts in the garage until the hulls dried. Then used a vice to crack nuts.

Seems an odd way to do it but it worked and as a kid I thought it was funny to watch old man driving on nuts just to make a big mess.

Excellent cuteness!

When I was a tween, family friends had a small walnut grove, though I don't know what kind of walnuts they were. I did a search, and there are California black walnuts (which I'm guessing they were) and Northern California black walnuts, and they use these natives as rootstock for English walnuts. I don't know if any NE black walnuts grow here, but since we have places with such different climates that someone somewhere in the state can grow almost anything. There's even a commercial banana farm.

I was assigned cracking duty..; I got bit! It was a heavy duty nutcracker--my father also was an affcianado of fine tools--but I don't remember anything about it really. It wasn't one of those large scale lever machines, but I think it was more than just squeeze...

I went through a period as an adult when I didn't like walnuts anymore. Recently, I found a new mixed nuts seller whose boxes have super fresh nuts, not much salt, and no peanuts (though a few cashews, which are also pseudo-nuts). There are plenty of delightful English walnuts and they're SO fresh, and already cracked and picked. But I haven't seen any black walnuts lately.

I have to tell you: It took me three readings to catch on that you were asking about the things that cracked the nuts, not making crackers (crispbreads) from the walnuts. :) Are you cooking with them?

Lol to the crows. I think the walnuts would just roll into the potholes on my gravel road. I find the idea of picking nuts out of the gravel unappetizing.

I stopped by my mom’s and her black walnut had even more nuts than the ones at my sisters.

The last time I harvested them I used them mostly in baked goods.

I used to live by a cove in a salt water bay. Seagulls habitually flew over a rocky island ledge with a quahog (hard shelled clam) and would drop the quahog onto the ledge below. Then the gulls would land on the ledge for their feast.

We have a huge black walnut tree and Dad loved them. Me, not so much.

We would gather 5 gallon buckets of nuts and dump them in the driveway and drive over them to remove the hulls. The nuts were picked up and cracked. Dad took a 2x4, made a small hollow big enough to hold the nut and I smacked it with a hammer until it broke. As I broke the nuts he picked the nutmeats out with one of those picks you get with the old nut bowls. He'd put the nutmeats in a quart jar in the refrigerator until he collected enough to make something which would have taken less time if he hadn't been snacking on them periodically. We also had a butternut tree, which is now long gone but the process of dealing with the nuts was the same.

We never found a nutcracker that actually worked on the black walnuts, so the hammer remained the weapon of choice.

Annie