Here is yet another small project for you lathe enthusiasts, a pie crimper. A simple little tool used to join the top and bottom dough sections of pie prior to baking. It also imparts a decorative edge to boot.
I stumbled upon the pie crimper while searching the internet for something totally unrelated, but it struck my fancy. So I gave it a go. Plus, who knows, it may inspire management to bake me a pie!
A simple turned handle and a wooden wheel for the business end. The handle is straight forward to turn on the lathe, but the wheel took a little work. I marked, then sawed out a circular disk. Then I filed it to round.
Marking out the sawtooth pattern was a simple matter of stepping off even spacing around the circumference of the disc with a pair of dividers. The opposite side is simply shifted one half step. The cutting of the “V” shaped notches was a head scratcher though.
I’m sure there are lots of ways of cutting the notches, but I settled on using my trusty bench knife. An hours worth of whittling and I was done.
The wheel is installed into a notch cut into the handle. Much in the same way as I installed the leather on my flyswatters. An axle fashioned from a 16d finish nail brings the two together and ready for work.
I finished this little pie crimper with my usual Tried & True Original linseed oil and beeswax finish. Food safe straight from the can and the beeswax will make cleaning the pie crimper that much easier.
No pie to test it on yet, but it did a fine job on this slice of bread.
Hopeful for pie.
Greg Merritt
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