Thanks. I built it out of what I had around, so it's not the first choice of materials. I'm going to treat the interior wood part of the table with hot mineral oil and paraffin as they do cutting boards and cider presses. Ideally that won't see much moisture, I'm going to rout a drain trough and drain hole into a piece of HDPE cutting board and use that as the actual pressing surface.
I did a brief test with a scale today and it comes in at ~30 lbs force with just the levers and around 95 with a 7 lb weight on the end. I calculated it at a 9.3 mechanical advantage, so that seems ballpark. I'm considering moving the fulcrum a couple of inches closer to press shaft and also mounting some pulleys. I was hoping it might do double service as a cider press, but I don't think the construction is up to the 70 psi the cider people think is good. It did do a serviceable job with a small hoop of coarsely ground apples when I hung a concrete block on the lever, so there may be hope. Ha ha.
Now I need to get the external controller ordered for my fridge/cave and I'll be getting close on the equipment end.
M
