The PeakReady Blog

Oil worries? Make your own!

• Posted by e4 on January 9th, 2008 filed in Cost: Medium, Difficulty: Moderate, Food: Preparing It, General, Projects, Self Sufficiency, Tools & Products

Here’s an interesting device for your peak oil wish-list: A home-scale oil press. It’s made in The Netherlands, and it’ll set you back about 100 euros ($142 as of today), including shipping. Using a hand crank and a small lamp oil heat source, you can turn a wide variety of seeds or nuts into cooking oil.

It’s a pretty efficient little device too. With 10 minutes of cranking (or pedaling if you’re handy), you can turn a pound and a quarter of whole black oil sunflower seeds into about 8 ounces of sunflower oil. Plus you’ll get another 12 ounces or so of high protein seed cake. (Chicken feed anyone?) Switch to flax seeds and you’ll do even better.

If you don’t have that many euros in your couch cushions, and you have a small hydraulic jack and welding skills, you can make an oil press yourself. You’ll get less of the oil out of the seeds, but have more money left in your pocket.

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[ Updated with correction: Pricing includes shipping. ]