Happy Valley Ranch Cider Presses

In September 2019, Southern Garden Tools, Inc. bought out Happy Valley Ranch Cider Presses in Paola, KS.  Immediately it was decided that all the equipment needed to be upgraded.  Decades of experience was also lost. So began the trek of reinventing how to make the old fashioned cider presses in a new way.

This is where our story begins,

The first thing we did was change the wood from soft maple to hard maple. 

There is a H-U-G-E difference between soft and hard maple.   Besides hard maple being noticeably harder, it is much, much heavier- like WOW! Much heavier. 

Hard maple is also more difficult to work with because it likes to chip.  It wears out the cutting tools very fast, sharp blades and bits are very important.

1/64"

Most of the wood is cut to 1/64" tolerance.  To put that in perspective, houses are built to +/- 1/16".