Move Two Wheelie Bins at Once
Trapping the rear bin's raised lid under the front bin's closed lid so the pair tips and tows as one.
Crack a Whole Basket of Nuts Without Chasing Shells, Using a Pivoting Two-Board Jig
Two boards joined by a single nail, with a hole bored through the top one: the hole holds the nut upright for the hammer, and swinging the top board out on the pivot dumps the cracked nut and shell straight into a bucket.
crack a lot of walnuts fast, shells go everywhere, hold a nut still to hit it, bulk nut cracking, shop-made nutcracker
The Problem
Cracking a basket of walnuts by hand is two jobs, and the second one is worse than the first. The nut skids out from under the hammer because nothing is holding it, and once it does crack, the shell fragments scatter across the bench and the floor. A handheld nutcracker fixes the holding but not the scattering, and it only does one nut at a time with both hands committed.
The Technique
The jig is two flat boards and one nail.
- Take a solid bottom board — anything flat and stable that can sit on a bench or a stool.
- On top of it, lay a piece of 1x4 and fix it with a single nail through both boards near one end. One nail, not two: the top board has to swing on it.
- Bore a hole through the top board only, out toward the free end. About 1½" suits a walnut — size it so the nut sits in the hole and rests on the bottom board rather than dropping through.
- Position the jig so the top board can swing out past the edge of the bench, with a bucket underneath that arc.
Working it is one motion per nut: drop a nut in the hole, hit it once with a hammer, then swing the top board out over the bucket. The cracked nut and every piece of shell go with it and fall in. Swing the board back, drop in the next nut.
Pro tip: Size the hole to the nut, not to the drill bit you happen to own. Too large and the nut tips and takes the blow off-centre; too small and it wedges in the hole instead of dropping out when you swing. If you are working through mixed sizes, a second hole in the same board sized for the smaller ones costs nothing.
You end up with a bucket of mixed shell and nut meat rather than sorted kernels — this jig does the cracking, not the picking. What it removes is the two things that make bulk cracking slow: holding each nut still, and cleaning up after each one.
Safety note: Your holding hand sits close to the hammer. Steady the top board well back from the hole, not around it, and clamp or screw the bottom board down so the whole jig can't shift under the blow. Shell fragments come off a hammer strike fast — wear eye protection.
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