From Richard Tomes: ( r.tomes@btinternet.com )
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000

Hi Folks, If anyone is interested in my eccentricities, here are a couple of photos of my project for last summer...the scratter.
Never having seen one , or even having heard the word 'scratter', I had to invent it. (was amazed to see how similar a profesionally made one from the 30s was to mine...)
You will be relieved to hear that this is a picture of it naked, and that now the 'grater' part is housed in wood with a small box on top to take a couple of apples at a time, to be pushed down with a plunger on a lever.
It doesn't take much pushing down....fairly rips through a bucket of apples in no time.
I made the grater by cutting a piece of steel out of a (very) old oil drum, drilling 300 holes in it, and then bending each one out, just like a cheese grater, but without sharpening the sticky-out bits.
The engine and gearing is from an Atco mower, but the gearing was not quite right as it was, so had to invert half of it to get it slow enough.... For those of you having fits about contact with ferous metal, ALL the cider making equipment I've seen pre 1960 or so has been largely made up of great rusty blades, spouts, nails and nuts and bolts....so what's good enough for 99% of our forefathers etc, etc....

Any way, here it is..

R.T.