New Star Foodservice 28003 Heavy Duty Pecan Nut Cracker, Nickel-plated Steel/wood Base

We pick several pounds of pecans each year and had been cracking them by hand until we decided to by a pecan cracker. While looking for one on Amazon, I saw this same cracker from several sellers but with mixed reviews about it not being sturdy, destroying pecans and other nuts, difficult to use, and other reviews raving about it being "the best thing since sliced bread" or the best nut cracker ever purchased. I ended up buying this one because the reviews made it sound more sturdy than some of the other ones, I have no idea if it is any different than the ones the other sellers were offering. But this one was also one of the lower-priced ones while still having good reviews, so I ordered it. It works really well. My first few attempts resulted in demolished pecans, but by the fourth or fifth pecan I had found a good adjustment and it did great. You may have to slightly adjust the screw/bolt depending on the size of the shell you are trying to crack, but it isn't much work at all. The lever is easy to pull, if it is not then all you have to do is adjust to the size of the shell and it will crack like it is supposed to. Overall, I am very happy with my purchase so far. I cracked and shelled about two pounds of pecans while watching a movie over the course of an hour or so.

It was a little wobbly (requiring the use of two hands - one to operate lever and one to hold device steady) on the toughest of shells until I mounted it to a larger board. After that, I could really crank through the shelling process without issue. I simply drilled a hole in each end of the cracker's base and ran bolt through it and a piece of 1/4" mdf I had laying around. I recessed the back side holes so the head of the small bolts sit flush in the wood and don't scratch counter top. It made a huge difference in how well this cracker performed. I later drilled a hole in the end of the base so I could hang the entire unit on a wall, out of the way until next pecan season.One other tip: the adjustment dial can sometimes bind up due to the pecan shell dust. I shot a little WD-40 on it, and wiped off all excess and it turns easily despite the dust.

We shelled appx. 90 pounds of pecans with this device. After the first use, I took it off the original base and mounted it on a 12" piece of 2x4. This provided a much more stable base and made it much easier to use. Another thing to watch out for is flying shell pieces. Nuts obviously vary in size, and unless you adjust the device for every nut, you'll have some that send pieces of the shell flying. Hold your hand over the nut being cracked and wear a glove as some of the pieces are sharp. To minimize the mess, we used this is in a plastic storage tub around a foot deep. This caught the shell fragments (for the most part).

Bought this as I had pecans of different sizes to crack and this works wonderful as I can adjust to each nut size. Good and sturdy, easy to use and is a very good value for your money.

This Pecan Nut Cracker does a good job at making cracking pecans less work, but it definitely makes a mess, sending shells flying everywhere. However, any nutcracker would send the shells flying everywhere! This nutcracker can easily be adjusted to accommodate larger and smaller pecans. Other reviewers suggest putting the nutcracker inside a box to catch the shells -- that would definitely be helpful to cut down on the mess. But, if you have a large quantity of pecans, this is a really handle tool. It would probably work well for other types of nuts too.

Bottom Line first:We bought the New Star Heavy Duty Pecan Nut Cracker for a reason. Crack pecan nut shells using leverage rather than hand strength. From the beginning it is clear that the arm will not stand up to much use before bending. This is a nice looking gadget, and may stand up to light or occasional use. This is not what you want if you want long or heavy service life. I will be keeping our New Star Heavy Duty Pecan Nut Cracker, but I hesitate to recommend it. It is not the most expensive and may yet be value for the cost.____________________________________Come fall, we like many like to have un-shelled nuts about. Plus this year I was gifted a bag of fresh from the local farm Texas Pecans. Adding to the coincidence, the wife has made fresh nuts one of her very few extravagances.This left us with two problems. We did not have a nut cracker and as the wife has diminished hand strength we needed one that did not depend on grip. . Most nut crackers depend on your ability to grip tightly on handles. The New Star Heavy Duty Pecan Nut Cracker uses a fairly long level arm and allows you to make some adjustments. This is a fairly smart looking set up and so far relatively stable.From the first use it is clear that it will not survive up to hard use. The handle flexes and will bend, I have only slightly more faith in the way it is affixed to the base. Minor point, with a minor design change the nut could be housed in the cracker in such a way as to reduce the scatter of shells as you crack them. Then again, I try to apply pressure carefully to save strain on the lever arm and am less likely to violently crack the pecans.

This is a good nutcracker. It's built very similarly to a can smasher we have.; however, you can adjust for different size nuts. This is good for us as we have several varieties of pecan trees: some trees make long, thin nuts; whereas others make short, round pecans. This cracker allows me to crack the shell without smashing the nut inside. It is best used outside as it does make a bit of a mess.

The length adjustment does not work. The barrel tube diameter is to large to engage the threads on the length adjustment barrel. I worked on it a bit to make it hold some but it still is just junk. I would not recommend this product.