How to Dismantle a Pineapple

This might seem like a daunting task to many people so I wanted to show people how easy this process actually is.  If you are willing to peel and slice an apple, than you can do the same to it's piney counterpart.

Let's start off with the knife.  Use a serrated knife (one with teeth).  I'm using a bread knife here, works wonderful.

Cut off the Top and Bottom so that you can give it a flat surface to sit on.  Rolling around is not good.

Start peeling the pineapple by slicing down the side of the pineapple.  Yes it will not be round, it won't matter later on.  Yes there will be excess, you will need to trim thicker because of the unevenness of the peel, don't worry cost wise you aren't wasting that much.

Now like a peel apple or a pizza, slice out your wedges.

Like an apple, cut out the core.  Actually you can eat the core, but like an orange peel, people have been trained that eating a pineapple core is not correct.  Yes there are people in the world who eat citrus peels; it's dried then use it in soup, teas, and candies.  The Pineapple core is a lot more woodier so some people don't' like the texture, but that doesn't stop me, I just think "yum more fiber".  If you have a juicer, this is a great time to use it.

Cut to desired size

YAY, giant bowl of pineapples!

This probably took me twice the amount of time I would use to cut an apple, but I got three times more fruit out of this adventure.

Reasons I prefer to to cut my own pineapple 

• fresh is always better than canned
• cutting your own is much cheaper than purchasing pre-cut from the produce section of a grocery store
• A single pineapple may seem expensive, but when you measure your end quantity against the same amount of apple or orange it's pretty much in range in cost.
• control of cut sizes.  Great for leaving long wedges for the BBQ grill

Tutorial - How to Make a Foam Cutting Table

Why use a foam cutter?  Well let's look at this picture below.  The piece on the left was broken naturally while the piece on the right uses the cutter.  Now do you want your sword to look all bumpy?  That's going to slice up a body really cleanly.

But playing with foam is stil great for cosplay so over the past 4 years I have purchased two foam cutters (between $10 - $25).

So you can start off with a foam cutting knife and slice through your foam with a cutting drawn on.  But many time after i do it, and i flip the piece to the other side, I realized that I had not been holding the knife exactly straight.  So all my sizes on the drawn side is pretty, but but all the work on the backside is all misproportioned.  Looks quite bad.

hard to tell in the photo, but in real life the two sides aren't even . . . .

I used a foam cutting table (like a band saw table but with a hot wire) back in high school.  It was pretty fun to play with, but why would you pay that much for something that would just take up space and you would rarely use?  So let's make our own

I used a small bed side dresser to tape the foam cutter and let it stick up straight past the end of this computer desk.

Be careful you dont hit the knife on the table.  I accidently melted a line on the table molding (my boyfriend wasn't very happy to see that damage on his desk).

So just like using a bandsaw, you start sliding your piece against the knife and push it naturally to let it cut. 

It's also awesome on holes because you slide the piece onto the knife.

Here's my cut piece.  Lines are smooth as much as my hand can glide (if you are more picky you can you a straight edge to act as a guide if that's what your piece calls for).