Chocolate Covered Nuts

MsDebbie in her newsletter at Craftisian talked about Chocolate Covered Nuts as a theme, and as I read it I thought, I just created one of those but I sent it off to my son for a Christmas Present.

So I just had to make another one so I had pictures, because if you don’t have pictures, it never happened.

This was made out of some cutoff walnut lumber. It was maybe 6 quarter and 17 1/2” X 6”. I resawed it into two slices and thickness planed it to 1/2”.

I measured a mason jar to see how big it was so that I could make a box to put the jar in. It’s 3 1/4 X 5 1/2”. The box was made with 1/4 X 1/4” rabbits on all 4 sides on the inside surface. So 2 sides were 1/2” wider than I needed for the contents of the mason jar. The other two sides were 1” wider than the contents of the mason jar. The bottom was the same width as the first 2 sides and the top was the width of the latter two sides. The bottom and the top were both square.

I glued it up, put rubber bands around it and put it in the microwave for 30 seconds to set the glue. I took it out and started sanding it. Rounded the edges except for the bottom and wiped it down with Gel Varnish. All done in an hour.

I sanded two walnuts on the end to make them flat. Drilled it with a drill bit just less than my screws and attached the walnut to the top as the lift.

So there you have it Chocolate covered nuts.

I’ve cracked about 1,500 walnuts so far this winter and I’ve got about another 1,500 to go. There are still about 3,000 still on the ground where I found these.

My testing have found that with larger walnuts about 30 will fill a 1/2 pint jar and 60-65 will fill a pint jar. I’ve cracked about 4 gallons and given most of them away. I’m keeping them in the garage to keep cold because I’ve found that they will spoil if left on the kitchen counter.

They specify keeping them in a refrig or freezing them to keep. They however keep if left in the shell. So I’m not going to crack the ones in storage until I need them.

If you notice that the lid on the larger box matches the grain of the side. I didn’t notice that until I had put on the finish. Next time I will match all 4 sides and have a matching top and bottom. But, that’s saved to next time.

The last picture has the box filled with un-cracked Walnuts which is how I’ll keep it on my desk.

The small one will be sent to MsDebbie if she will send me her address.

I failed to mention that I’m using a “Grandpa’s Goodie Getter” Nut cracking tool. It works great.