Leifheit Cherry Stoner

I purchased a food dehydrator this winter to do some dried apples and I look forward to the fruit season this year. I want to do cherries and this looked like just the ticket. I got a very quick delivery and will have to wait to see how it works out. I liked the design of this unit as you do not have to position the cherry nor do you have to do a hand squeeze to get the pit out. It has a plunger. While made of plastic it looks like a quality build of lexan or some other durable plastic. The pitter looks to be a cross piece of very sharp surgical steel to cut the cherry and grab the pit. I will have to wait until cherry season to finish this but for now five stars. On buy stated they were able to do 10 lbs of cherries in about a half hour. That is a very high output for a home use pitter.update: 1-21-2013 I got this pitter to prepare cherries for drying and it worked great. However, I do not reccomend drying cherries. The taste is more like a raisan than a cherry when they are dried. The pitter worked great but I am disappointed in dried cherries.

After reading reviews for several cherry pitters, I thought this one would be a good tool to pit a lot of cherries, and I was not mistaken. I just used it to pit 3lb of cherries, and it was a breeze. My little son kept laughing and asking me to pit more.It is easy to assemble (pretty much, just put the rubber piece where the temporary cardboard guard is, and you are set to go). The pitted cherries just roll down the chute. I pitted a medium-sized cherries, and I did not have to feed them in - I just poured about a cup into the top part, put a bowl at the lower end of the chute, and started clicking the handle down. With a minimal effort, I got a cup of perfectly pitted cherries in seconds. And the pits in the lower compartment are almost absolutely clean, you can tell that no cherry got wasted. Just watch out for occasional splash of cherry juice that can come out in front of the pitter.I cannot yet comment on the durability of this product, but so far, it seems to work perfectly, I would definitely recommend it to my friends.

I bought this and just processed about 60 pounds of tart cherries for freezing. On the plus side, you have a very high success rate. The rate of 25 pounds an hour is probably overstated. We had three people in our little processing line and it took a little over three hours. One dropped cherries in the bin, the other punched the pits out, and the third checked the cherries for pit.With various sized fruit, we had several instances of cherries rolling through over the one in the extraction position, so that had to be monitored. Also you have to make sure you don't have too many cherries in the bin at once time or they get hung up on each other. The pits did come out very clean, and overall I'm very pleased with how this worked out for us.

I have done several batches with this pitter; the largest being 8#. It is easy to use and even easier to clean. It works extremely well for what it is. The cherries do not always auto feed down the chute. Softer cherries don't auto eject after being pitted. It splatters juice. My rubber gasket tore on the large batch but I still managed to finish just fine. Not a single thing so far was enough of a problem for me to whine that this isn't a great product. Our local cherry harvest is just weeks away and I intend to pit 50# to can using this product. The cherries come out whole and beautiful for presentation in pies, fruit bowls, and dessert topping. For the price, you really can't go wrong with this purchase. Just order extra gaskets if you're really going to put it to use!

I have used a different pitter in the past and this one is by far superior. It is a bit more expensive but well worth the extra money. The wide handle makes the repetitive motion easy and smooth. The wide collection container allows for continuous work flow and you do not have to stop and empty out the pit container. It is sturdy and cleaned easily. The inner spring cleaned easily and did not discolor like my previous pitter. Mine was damaged when it arrived (the bottom plastic clear container had some kind of crack/shatter) I was able to use it as it was prime cherry season but I notified Amazon and it was returned and refunded. I WILL be purchasing this same pitter again and hopeful the bottom with not have a crack.

We had large cherries this year and it was hard to use. Didn't always get the pit out. It made a hole but the pit was still in.

This leaves the pit attached or completely missed it about 10% of the time. The other version with the rubber gasket works a lot better. I have the gasket version but the gasket wore out so I tried this one. It’s not worth it at all.

The directions are not the best but thanks to another reviewer I was able to get the answer. I've included pics. Flip the lid over and there is a slot to insert it. The cherries may still stick to the plunger but the gasket reduces the chance of a stone still being attached to the cherry when it drops from the pitter. I've tried this on ripe/soft Bing cherries, I had maybe 5 in the 1 lb batch that were too bug to drop from the shoot. The cherries didn't stick to the puncher as long as I pulled up a bit when it popped up. The pound took me 5 minutes to pit, and most of that time was pulling off the stems. We will definitely be buying cherries more often now.