Nutcracker Tool
A hand-held metal tool with two handles joined at one end, working on the principle of a lever, used for cracking hard shells of nuts such as arecanut (adike), groundnuts, almonds, and walnuts; it is compact and durable, usually made of iron or brass, and designed to apply strong pressure with minimal effort.
Before ready-made cut arecanut (adike) or packaged nuts were available, households used this tool daily, especially in the betel nut (adike) culture of Karnataka, where people would crack arecanuts before chewing them with betel leaves; it was found in almost every South Indian household during the 19th and 20th centuries, representing the domestic life and food culture of earlier generations and serving as a practical example of how simple tools were created to solve daily needs.
