I think the answer is yes franktank, and I think it works both ways. I've read you can take a cutting from a very young seedling and graft it to a mature fruiting tree and it will often produce fruit within a couple of years when it may have taken many years if left on the young seedling.

Just FWIW, but I have a scion on a pear tree which I grafted on last year and it has a blossom on it now. Similarly, I grafted Golden Delicious to my Liberty some years ago and it fruited the next year -but the graft never thrived particularly well (although an alternate did, and fruited for the first time last season).

Perhaps there was some stressing of the graft that produced at once, or maybe I just grafted poorly. A lot of my earlier grafts were fairly crude, while nowadays only some of them are. ;-)

Good luck,

M