I've never made hard cheese before, and I'm wanting to make a cheese press. A Dutch lever style press appeals to me. I have some questions about building a press, if anyone can offer any advice:
1. I see a lot of posts with attachments showing plans, etc. of cheese presses, but I haven't figured out how to load those attachments. Can those attachments still be opened? If so, what do I need to do? When I click on attachments I just see: "404 - Attachment Not Found"
2. Would it work to build a mold/basket with vertical wooden slats like the baskets on a lot of cider presses? If so, what kind of gap would I want between slats? Do different styles of cheese require molds with more or fewer drain holes, or can one mold be used for any style of cylindrical cheese I'd want to make? I'm particularly interested in making very hard cheese that I'm assuming might be more tolerant of less than ideal temperature and humidity conditions for aging.
3. Alternately or maybe supplementally, I've considered buying some stainless steel stove pipe and drilling holes in it. In that case, what size holes do I want and at what spacing?
4. If I'm making cheese using an 8 gallon pot, about what volume of curds should I expect to put into my press? And about what volume of whey should I expect to drain/press out? Does it matter if the whey drains away from the cheese or is it okay if the cheese sits in the whey?
5. Is it possible that a lever style cheese press could double for a cider press? I'm thinking I might be able to build a press that would support up to ~50 lbs of weight with a lever arm that would multiply that by 6 or more times. Does anyone know how that would compare to screw style cider presses? What styles of cheese, if any, would require more force than that for an 8 gallon (of milk) size cheese?
6. If I see a recipe calling for X lbs of pressing weight for a cheese made from 1 gallon (or some quantity) of milk, is there a simple way I can roughly modify that recipe for an 8 gallon batch? I assume for a larger cheese I'd need more weight, but is there a simple way to figure out roughly how much more?
Thanks!