Pitting

Cherry pitting is slow and messy with a hand held tool like mine. I bought my Avanti cherry & olive pitter at the Salvation Army some time ago since with a plan to make cherry jam in summer. At first it only saw some scant action on olives, it really isn't much good for olives - it forces out a cylindrical plug of flesh and seed - you lose less olive by crushing the fruit with the back of your knife and peeling the flesh away from the seed. I used it to pit cherries for the first time Sunday, it's better at cherries than olives, it's easy to target the seed and I was able to pit a kilo of fruit in about 40 minutes, it would have been faster if the tool didn't lock in the half-open position so frequently. If I pitted cherries more than once a year I'd be looking for a better designed tool.

I could be convinced to make a lot more jam if I had one of these


And this is how the pros do it