Hello, separating garlic bulbs into cloves by hand is tedious enough for up to a bushel. Are there any machines on the market that are used to separate large quantities?
Sure, but those are priiiicey! At a bushel it feels like you’ve got too much to do by hand, and too little to justify the cost of a splitter. Which is so often the case in small-scale agriculture. I really wish someone would make a hand crank model for the little guys.
You could check these guys out, they’re in Dundalk ON and do garlic-related machinery:
Or these through eBay if you don’t mind spending the money:
Many thanks Denis, really appreciate the info. I build machines too. The key thing mentioned in the link on ebay is they use rollers. Suggesting if I can get my hands on some soft surface rollers so as not to damage the cloves, I could build something that looks like the wringer on an old washing machine 
That’s exactly what I had in mind in terms of a manual crank operated separator! Small scale farmers really needs more of these small scale/low price/high efficiency tools.
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Could you custom hire this through another grower with a unit?
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Hi Eric, I was just perusing the farmhack site and saw something that rang a bell from seeing your post back in the fall. This is about 6 months late but perhaps just in time to build in whatever downtime remains before the flurry of the season truly begins.
http://farmhack.org/tools/garlic-clove-separator
Thank you very much for the idea. The pictures of the parts are very helpful. I will try to build this in my next bit of spare time 