We poured concrete in plywood moulds and while pouring the concrete is quick, assembling, disassembling and cleaning moulds between each pour was slow and laborious, so it got me thinking of faster ways to mould a block.

Searching online found that there are companies making hand operated brick presses using a lever to press clay bricks and large large hydraulic block presses are also made for commercial block production but little in between. It seemed pointless spending a lot of money on a block press - you mid as well just buy the blocks.

After seeing a friends blocksplitter in his shed, it seemed like it had everything needed to make a simple hydraulic block press in it minus the block mould. He gave it to me to experiment with as it didn't have enough power to split the large blocks that he had bought it for and it was much more efficient to cut light blocks with an axe.

The blocksplitter was a horizontal design and had an electric powered pump and hydraulic controls built in. These 4 ton block splitters are available new at our local hardware for under $500 but you should be able to pick them up for a fraction of this second hand. The block press modification design is fairly obvious just change the splitter to a moulding box.

If you already have a hydraulic blocksplitter then a modification to change the knife to plate with four bolt holes would allow you to interchange the knife with a block mould and still retain the original bloccsplitter functionality.