Hi Matt, Ahha, I found the original article on this thread. (LOL)
You can make trays for holding the fruit out of hardware cloth. I believe that the ΒΌ or 3/8 inch hardware cloth would be plenty strong to hold the fruit without the use of a wooden frame. Just make some slots for the hardware cloth to fit on and all should be fine. I would set the contraption right out in the sun to dry, it should be complete in a day during the summer and a couple of days in fall. Good luck. Cy From: blindhandyman@yahoogroups.com [mailto:blindhandy...@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Matt Sent: Friday, July 09, 2010 3:37 PM To: blindhandyman@yahoogroups.com Subject: [BlindHandyMan] Considering building my own apple drier or dehydrator Hi ya folks. Lately I've gotten into drying apples and cooking pies and stuff out of them. Mainly, I started out buying them already done from a Mennonite owned store. I quickly got addicted to them as snack food, then found recipes for making pies and breads out of them. I looked up instructions on drying your own. They suggested oven on the lowest setting, or in a car on a hot day. The oven works, but your spouse complains about the oven always being busy, and you can only get so many in there at 1 time. And it does take at least 6 hours the way I did it. My wife suggested I not buy a dehydrator, because as it is I am a gadget buyer. And ya start running out of space to live after so long. Just now I am considering building a wooden frame which would hold cookie sheets stacked but spaced from one another 1 on top of the other, and buying screen to cover the outside to keep some bugs out, and putting an old fan I have out in storage in one end of it. My idea lacks the heat element factor, but I live in east tx, and am figuring, I could set it up in the attic, or out in a back room where there is no air conditioning. I could go to the trouble of forming my own screen trays, if I wanted to build them, but then cleaning something like that with a wood frame? I don't think that would last long. Anyone ever done this stuff, say, to make jerky or whatever? just curious. Matt [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
