The problem of obtaining the meat from a nut with a hard shell is a long standing one. Some manual nutcrackers are adequate for most nuts, but are not adequate for black walnuts, which have an extremely hard and seemingly impenetrable shell. Consequently, for someone who does not normally crack open black walnuts, a hammer or the like must be used to smash the black walnut shell to obtain the meat. The problem with such an approach is that quite often, too much force is used and the meat itself is smashed as well a the shell.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,254,119 to Chamberlain et al, 2,178,375 to Lennard, 4,255,855 to Brazil and 4,641,430 to Han show that people have been trying to adequately solve this problem from at least 1918 to the present day. No doubt, many earlier attempts to solve the problem were made as well. Despite all of the efforts in this regard heretofore, there still exists a need for a black walnut cracker that can rapidly and easily open one black walnut after another for efficient retrieval of the nutmeat.