press

noun, cheese press | ‘cheese press’: an apparatus for pressing the curd in cheese-making (“cheese press, n.” OED)

“We were bailing it out of the vat as curd. Then it went into a metal hoop about that big around and about that high, and that’s what was put in the press, and when they tightened the press then it would slide together and squeeze the juice or whey out and make it a solid.”

“There’d be about twenty of them [hoops] in each press, and then it was like a big ratchet on it with a big handle on it that you tightened it up with.”

“When they were in the press, the whey had to get out of them. There was still whey in there, eh, and then my dad would have to go back out late at night and put another couple springs on the cheese to make sure there was lots of pressure on it to squeeze the excess moisture out.”