Excellent Press. However, it does take some patience, as the ratchet mechanism is a bit slow. Also, I would recommend that you first insert cheese cloth as a filter before adding grapes. Once grapes are pressed, raise the press, shuffle the grape husks around a bit, and then re-squeeze for best juice yield.

Where do I start? It works like it is designed, I guess. It takes a lot of effort. The board that it bolts to must be screwed down to something completely solid. Otherwise, you will twist the entire crusher off whatever it is sitting on. You will have to stop periodically and use the stick (supplied) to get the fruit down where the blades will grab. I ground up about 500# of apples last summer and it took two days for two of us relieving each other on the handle. It is very difficult to clean in spite of using a strong stream of water from the hose. I had to take it completely apart to get the bits of apples out of the mechanism and from underneath the stainless steel guide. (Just visible at the upper part of the crusher hopper in the picture.)

I've had this wine press for several months and have attempted one press with it. Here are my impressions:

A. The construction is generally sturdy and the workmanship seems good. One of the nuts on holding the basket staves came loose but I was able to put it back on easily.
B. A small amount of juice leaked from the center of the basket and in general, the juice seemed to run back under the lip of the basin an inch or two before dripping off rather than pouring out of the spout. I'm not sure how typical that is of wine presses and it is fairly easily remedied by placing the pan or bucket further back, but it seems like other designs might be less messy.

Lessons I learned using this:
1. Setting it up, cleaning it, sanitizing it, pressing the grapes, and then disposing of the seeds/detritus, cleaning it again, and putting it away take a long time. Be prepared to spend at least an hour the first time.
2. Look it up on youtube and watch it in use before you try to use it. I tried to just follow the written directions and severely underloaded it. I should have put all my grapes in at once rather than splitting it into two bunches. You really need a decent mass of grapes in order to press them effectively. (If you only have 1 or 2 gallons of grapes to press, you will also probably be better off with a smaller wine press. I had about 1 gallon of crushed grapes and it wasn't enough for the press to work very well--I'm not sorry I bought this though because I anticipate a larger harvest next year).
3. You really really want to use a mesh/cheesecloth bag inside the basket. Even with a bag, you'll end up with a few seeds in your pressed juice. I shudder to think what would have happened if I'd tried to use it without the mesh bag.

I wish I liked this better. Construction is solid and it has held up well. You will probably want the optional hopper - otherwise you have to keep feeding it every 30 seconds to a minute (2 person operation).
The design just doesn't crush that well for my money. I even added alternate rows of small screws to the drum to improve the results (screw heads crush just like the provided "teeth") - better, but still not good. And the cranking by hand is a slow process. I could get a lot more juice out of my apple press, and spend way less time on the process, if this crusher worked better. I don't think it's the product's fault - it's well made, just the design isn't that great.
One of these days I'm going to build that crusher that uses a garbage disposal to really pulp the apples...

In general, it gets the job done. However, a couple points of note, now having used it a few times. 1. Pain in the butt to clean and since the inner drum is wood it gets saturated with juice that in spite of a good cleaning eventually develops a sour odor. Without completely dissembling it, you just can't get all the frass and apple bits out from the drum and the housing. I'm sure this is just part and parcel with any crusher of this design. 2. These babies are a real work out. This isn't a defect in design, but something worth note. A motor driven model would definitely be in order if your intent is to press more than a few gallons at a time. We did one 30 gallon pressing and that equaled a good hour of crushing. Let's just say I had a good sweat going by the time we were done. 3. Lastly, minor design flaw in that the catch on the bottom leaks out the back because the mash tends to back up. Raking it out as you go helps a little but there is definitely a good bit of juice that seeps over the back of the catch onto the wood. We resolved this by mounting the unit at a slight angle so the excess just ran off into the press. All in all not a bad unit and definitely sturdy.