Adjustable-Dish Churn: Cream Is Poured Between a Fixed Ribbed Dish and a Turning One, Then Beaten by Wings and Dashers

"By this arrangement the concavo-convex dish E can be adjusted to a greater or less distance from the concave dish D; fixing the two dishes farther apart when churning cream, shown by the red lines in Fig. 1, and close together when churning milk."

Glue up hardwood for a box A 400 mm long, 260 wide and 280 high inside: a fixed end 40 mm thick and 322 tall, a crank end 22 thick, sides and floor 22 thick, joints sealed with silicone sealant, and a loose lid with a knob covering all but the fixed end. Bore the fixed end 16 mm straight down from its top, 20 mm in from its outside face, to 82 mm above the shaft's centre (which is 140 mm above the floor), and bore 16 mm in from its inside face to meet it: the conduit p. Set a kitchen funnel in the top of it as the pan B. Bore the fixed end 12.8 mm at the shaft's centre for the rod u and the crank end 16.6 mm.

Screw the dish D to the inside of the fixed end, its slot f over the conduit p, sealing round it. Cut six hardwood wings d 34 x 94 x 4 mm and screw them radially to the concave face of E so they reach 120 mm from the centre. Thread a 12 mm stainless rod u 120 mm long at one end for 70 mm and fix its plain end into E's boss with sealant and a cross pin. Pass it through D and the fixed end. Screw a mild steel flat bar plate q outside, bored 12.8 mm, and run a wing nut and washer on the thread either side of it: the thumb screws s and v.

Cut a hardwood shaft C 32 mm square and 340 mm long. Saw a slot 7 x 22 mm, 15 deep, across one end to take the sawcalf tab, and chisel a 16.4 mm square socket 50 deep in the other, so C can slide 15 mm as E is set. Mortise six hardwood paddles x 25 x 6 mm through it, 40 mm apart, alternately up and down, reaching 110 mm from its centre. File the end of a 16 mm stainless cog shaft w 110 mm long square for 34 mm; pass it through a hardwood bearing block on the crank end into the socket and pin a crank m of mild steel flat bar, 120 mm throw, with a hardwood handle, on its outer end. Set C's slot over the tab and hold it with a split pin through both.

For cream, set the turning dish's face 30 mm from the fixed dish's face with the thumb screws (closer, 15 mm, is Pike's setting for milk). Turn the crank briskly and, while it turns, pour about 8 litres of heavy cream at about 15 °C, checked with the thermometer, into the funnel, timing it. When the butter comes, lift the lid, pull the split pin and lift out the shaft C, take out the butter, drain the buttermilk into a bowl, wash the butter in cold water until it runs clear, salt and weigh it.

**John Pike** of Syracuse, Onondaga County, New York, US 30,930, 18 December 1860, "Churn". He claimed "the combination and arrangement of the adjustable convex dish D, concavo convex dish E, with the radial beaters on each as described, together with the wings d, d, shaft C, and dashers x, x". He wrote that the butter comes "ordinarily inside of two minutes with sweet milk and one minute with cream"; we have not tested that. His pan B was metal, his dish D adjustable on a slide H and his shaft held to E by a spring c; ours is a kitchen funnel, a dish screwed fast and a split pin. Neither the text nor the drawing gives the gearing's form; ours is a plain crank. His D is "say eight inches in diameter", which we use; every other size here is ours.