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I recently pulled out an older Jean-George book, and in the back, he suggests slicing limes in thirds for juicing (not 3 slices, but kind of like a triangle leaving the fibrous middle). He says the dense pulp in the middle prevents more juice from coming out. I image the same would be true of lemons.

But I have one of those wooden reamers too, so I'm curious to know if anyone knows if the tools work when citrus is cut different ways.

I'm not sure that this isn't biased. Using an already wet reamer/measuring cup etc is going to add some liquid to the 2nd test...still I'm trying it at home.---I hardly ever use a normal citrus juicer though I just use a fork, it doesn't crush the pulp down the way a normal reamer does.

I don't know. I can see how you'd get more juice out of a lemon by slicing it differently if you're squeezing by hand. When I just need a bit of lemon juice, I'll slice it similar to ottan's method, leaving the core behind. I definitely get more juice out of a side segment than I would from a traditional quarter.

However, if you're already using a citrus reamer, why would it make a difference how you slice the lemon? The reamer is designed to squeeze juice from the pulp anyway, regardless of the direction of the slice. It doesn't make sense. Plus, how do you know the two lemons they used in the "test" were similar? Maybe one was larger. Maybe one was just drier and not as juicy.

This could work with my favorite tool for squeezing citrus which looks something like this: http://www.amazon.com/Norpro-Stainless-Steel-Citrus-Juice-Press/dp/B0002IBOAK/ref=tag_dpp_lp_edpp_ttl_ex
It really is a no mess way of squeezing citrus since the seeds can't filter through.

Spiffy! I'll try it tonight!

I assume this would work for limes as well?

Now that I have a citrus reamer I'll never go back to hand squeezing unless I don't have a reamer available. I get so much more juice using the reamer than I ever did by hand.