Tortilla Press

This is the finished project that I posted in one of my design blogs. It wasn't a hard project but seeing that I built it on my porch with mostly handtools it did present some challenge.

I did change a few thing on the fly like the direction that the feet, and the top cross member ran, instead of running them side ways, I ran them front to back. This was mainly because I used short pieces of scrapes and it didn't work out the other way, no big deal really the main reason for having the cross member was to have additional material at a right angle to the grain to distribute the pressure of the lever, I wouldn't want top of the press to crack with the grain.

The bottom piece help the stabilize the the main block and give me four feet which I glued on rubber non slip pads.
The main body is made from the cut offs from a maple top I made that I just couldn't bring myself to toss, and the rest are pieces of cherry that came from different projects.

The press worked great at making eight inch tortillas, which is the prefect size that we like to eat. You can view the post where I designed the press in sketch up here. This is a great project to build and if you like making your own tortillas I highly recommend you give it a try, not to mention that it is a great conversation starter.

I also decided to enter this project in the Nothing New Except the Glue Challenge sponsored by Gorilla Glue over at LumberJocks You can see all the entries here

Joey