Sauerkraut Pounder

The best part of making sauerkraut is when you get to pound it into the jar. I think it’s neat to see the juices get squeezed out of the leaves. I generally use a potato masher for the task, but after a few tries I decided to upgrade to a proper cabbage masher. They sell online for about $20, but I decided to whip one up on the lathe this weekend instead.

I have a bunch of rough-cut slab cherry in the woodpile that is not far removed from firewood. (When you get free wood, it’s for a reason.) I grabbed a 4x4 that had sort of been planed to dimension, cut out the rotten and cracked parts, and put the rest on the lathe. Sorry there are no process pictures. It took about an hour, and I didn’t think about it until I was almost finished.

I’m happy with how it turned out, though if I do it again I’d buy a bunch of varying grits of sandpaper to get it really smooth, then polish it up before I took it off the machine. There are a few sanding lines that are on it, still, and I don’t think I’ll be able to get them out without a lot of work.

That’s the thing about making your own stuff. You don’t really get good at something until you’ve done it a few times, so you either have to throw away the thing you made and start over or live with the mistakes. I could hope that this cabbage smasher would eventually break or rot, but it’s a really nice tool that might outlive me - flaws and all - if it’s maintained. In other words, I don’t get to make a second one unless it’s a gift.

Here’s hoping someone else wants a cabbage smasher as much as me.