Had a long discussion with our local kitchen store owner and looked at her stock. It looked like this cherry stoner would be the most efficient. It has a curved plate that holds the cherry in place as the pit remover is extracted from the fruit. It works just as well as I thought it would.
It extracts most pits cleanly without losing any of the fruit and the cherry drops out of the tool with a flick. Once I got a rhythm going, and realized that the the fastest extraction happens with the cherry inserted sideways, I was processing a cherry about every couple of seconds. It's not quite as fast as the old hopper feeder/lever action model I grew up with but almost. It also doesn't mangle the cherries like that did. They come out looking nice. It's a good thing that cherries ripen in mid summer so I could pit them over the glass patio table. Juicy cherries can be messy. Inside a sink works too but why waste a summer day?
If there's any negative it would be that this is made of plastic. It is certainly more fragile than a metal model. Though using it for a couple of hours a year I don't see that durability should be a problem. On the other hand, that plastic makes it very inexpensive.
I works well for Calamari olives too. The tool holds the larger fruit size just fine.
I like this pitter. It works easily, and ejects the pit completely, even from the largest cherries. Reviews of other pitters say that they don't always push the pit completely out, but that is not a problem with this one.
The scissors action makes it easy to use. It's a good idea to work over a bowl because the pit can come shooting out with some force, so you can eject a pit across a room if you're not careful. Then again, you might find that fun to do!
There is a part that prevents the cherry from sticking to the "piston" that pushes out the pit, so you don't have to pull the cherry out. It just falls out. Hard to find any fault with this tool.
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I bought 2 of these when I saw our cherry tree would bear fruit this year. My wife and I did 5 cups of cherries in a few minutes. The fruit remained whole and attractive. The stone just flies out! This is a good pitter period. And so inexpensive I recommend buying extras to use as gifts. Wear an old shirt or apron as there may be some spray. We did ours outside at our picnic table on newspapers so we did not have much clean up. If you can use a paper punch then you are qualified to operate this gem. A+
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I have a favourite recipe that calls for 4 cups of olives and the only way to buy these particular olives is with the pit still in, so I really need a good pitter... and this is NOT it.
This cherry/olive pitter is (obviously) plastic, but unfortunately it's a plastic that's not as strong as my olives. Even standard green olives are too much for this weak plastic gadget. I have felt like I was going to break the plastic handle when squeezing to get the pit out (really tough on your hands, too); the plastic didn't break, but it did bend (INSTEAD of pushing the pit out).
Save your money for a strong metal cherry/olive pitter if you plan on using this more than once.
On the really soft olives it works great, though... but so do my fingers.
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I just received this item a few days ago. I tried it out by making candied cherries, which required pitting about a pound of cherries. It worked fine, though if you do not hit the stone right on center, it might not eject the stone. On balance, not a big problem. I just kept a small spoon handy for this very occasional problem, which was still MUCH easier to deal with than cutting the pit out of a pile of cherries by other means.
Take note that those who did not like this device were generally talking about using it for olives, while those who did were talking about pitting cherries. If you are pitting mass quantities of cherries, you might not be crazy about it, because you are dealing with one cherry at a time. Given my modest needs (probably typical of the home cook), this device works just fine.
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The Presto 08851 put a sharp, uniform edge on a dull, mistreated 18 inch machete blade (1/16 inch thick). The sharpener had no visible signs of wear. I am sold.
