fleshing knife?

Okay – I haven’t ran a line since I was a teenager (and that was more than a few years ago…) and at the urging of my boys (10 & 13), we are trapping this fall.

As a kid, there was a local fur buyer who would take animals in the round. Muskrats were the only critter I skinned and put up myself. No longer having an option to sell in the round I’m having to learn my way around putting up everything we may catch.

So I made a fleshing beam and purchased a cheap knife. Here’s my question – how sharp should the fleshing knife be? I get the whole “you get what you pay for” stuff and yet can’t justify spending the coin on a better knife. Not for the handful of critters we are going to be dealing with.

The knife I purchased is pretty dull. Like a new lawnmower blade. Is that okay, or should I put a better edge on it?

When you say a fleshing knife are you talking a Necker or Sheffield knife? If so I don’t use either one or any like it. I use a fleshing tool for all my furs but rats and its not sharp at all. The rats I use an old ice cream scoop. The biggest mistake guys do fleshing is they take off too much when fleshing. When you flesh your after the excess meat left from skinning, any glands on the skin and the large fat deposits. With the exception of beaver (I hate putting up beaver) fleshing shouldn’t take very long to do. When it comes to rats there is very little fleshing that needs to be done. A rat will take me about 30 sec. to flesh. If you check youtube I’m sure there are some good videos you can check out to help you also.

I wasn’t clear. I’m not concerned about fleshing rats – as you indicated – they are very simple to do. It’s coon primarily that has me asking.

And the knife I’m referring to is a 2 handled “drawing knife”. I’ve watched a few youtube vids of guys fleshing coons with them and it seems like they’re working with a fairly sharp edge.

Your draw knife should be as sharp as you can get it. Just the same as your skinning knife. The sharper the better.