I have been making my own corn tortillas for a while now. Ever since I started, I have needed a tortilla press but always refused to buy one on the grounds that I was eventually going to build one based on the excellent Steve Ramsey video on making one. I am a big fan of Woodworking for Mere mortals, and as soon as I saw this video ages ago I knew I had to build it. It only took me probably over a year to get around to it. I built this entirely from 2x6 spruce cutoffs from my bunk beds projects.
Steve starts out with an old cutting board made of laminated strips. I basically made my own cutting boards by ripping strips out of my 2x6 cutoffs and gluing them up. Other than that, I really didn't deviate from his design at all, so I'm not going to go into a lot of build detail here. Watch his video to build your own!
I used ordinary brass hinges from the hardware store.
I did deviate from the plans in a couple of ways. The first is this v profile cut into the end of the top press piece. It is meat to give your fingers something to catch to open the press.
I also used a lock nut instead of a wing nut like Steve did.
I added some dowels at the joint between the bottom of the press and this vertical piece that holds the handle.
And, because I had the benefit of learning from Steve's build first, I put a bigger bump in my handle so I didn't have to add a block to the top half of the press to allow the handle to make contact while still giving my fingers clearance to hold the handle.
If you enjoyed this article, consider subscribing to our blog. We have an email subscription box at the top right of the page, and an RSS/Atom feed directly below it.
No comments:
Post a Comment