River Runner
New member
More folks then one would think are unfamiliar with the process of fleshing a hide. I hope I can help out a bit.
The first fleshing, and probably the only fleshing that anybody not finishing their own furs, needs to be concerned with , takes place right after skinning the animal.
The hide is placed flesh side up over your fleshing beam and stretched downward to stretch the skin and make a flat path for your fleshing knife.
There's a post in the forum titled "making a fleshing beam" at http://www.predatormastersforums.com/ubb/Forum14/HTML/000050.html for anyone looking for ideas or more info on what a fleshing beam acually is and or does.
With the hide stretched down over your fleshing beam what your looking to do is scrape off the meat and fat left on the skin from the skinning job. Scraping is actually what your doing too. A Skife knife works best and is available in many sizes and models. With the sharp edge of the blade facing away from you, lay the blade flat against the skin, not edge down, but edge away and the blade laying flat.
Press the blade down against the hide and firmly push the knife away from you, down the beam, across the hide in a scraping motion. With the hide stretched over the fleshing beam, if you tube skinned your critter you can roll the skin as you go turning up a new area to flesh each time.
A skife knife, sometimes called a draw knife, has two handles and a wide flat blade. One handle on each end of the blade, one for each hand...yeah you see where I'm going with this
but that's what I'm referring to when I say skife knife, and they take a lot of work out of fleshing for you.
Continue to scrape the meat and fat off, rolling the hide as you go until you feel you have fleshed it adequately.
You will come across large chunks of meat from time to time, so it's best to have your skinning knife handy and they can be cut away before attempting to scrape them off with your skife knife.
Any part of the hide that you cannot really get a good flat stroke with your skife knife will have to be worked on with your skinning knife also. A good example is the ear nubs. If you left most of the inside ear nubs on your hide when you skinned the animal they will literally be surrounded by meat. The ear nubs either need to be cut off closer to the head skin or that meat needs to be removed. Meat left behind will 90% of the time lead to hair slippage on the ears.
When you get good enough you can literally turn the ears inside out and fill them with salt to prevent this. If your fleshing a hide to send out to be tanned and you can't get all the meat off the ears, be sure and pack them nubs full of salt. On them, around them, in them, until they are dry. I like to turn the ears inside out on hides that come in here to thoroughly tan them and to add one more step against slippage. Turning ears takes lots of practice, not something everyone need be concerned with, but it's a good safe gaurd against slippage.
The faces of your hides are another delicate area. Don't try to use your skife knife on the face.
A good trick I learned years ago is to take a light bulb, bulb up, feed it in through the mouth of your hide and press it up against the inside of the head. Drape the rest of the face down over the bulb and by squeezing the whole works you force that bulb up against the inside of the hide and with the other hand you can whittle the meat away with your skinning knife. The bulb gives you a hard, smooth, rounded, surface to press the hide against with your knife. They make wooden tools for this, some call them bull horns, or fleshing horns, similiar to the end of a ball bat for those interested.
When fleshing faces you want to take as little as possible off when working on the muzzle of your critter. Scraping to deep will cut the cuticle of the whiskers and they will fall out. It will appear as a small dark pimple or bump, simply, but carefully flesh around them.
Tails on most other then raccoons don't need to be scraped...to an extent. If you split your tails, fine and dandy. If the tails are stripped instead of split, I like to pierce the tip of it and fill it with salt before I began any tanning steps. During the tanning, I will feed a small cloth strip through the tail and out the piercing I made to help wick the tanning chemicals into the tail.
Once you feel as though you've finished fleshing your hide, you'll want to give it a good salt down.
Happy fleshing
------------------
~River Runner~
Champion Tannery
www.predatormasters.com
The first fleshing, and probably the only fleshing that anybody not finishing their own furs, needs to be concerned with , takes place right after skinning the animal.
The hide is placed flesh side up over your fleshing beam and stretched downward to stretch the skin and make a flat path for your fleshing knife.
There's a post in the forum titled "making a fleshing beam" at http://www.predatormastersforums.com/ubb/Forum14/HTML/000050.html for anyone looking for ideas or more info on what a fleshing beam acually is and or does.
With the hide stretched down over your fleshing beam what your looking to do is scrape off the meat and fat left on the skin from the skinning job. Scraping is actually what your doing too. A Skife knife works best and is available in many sizes and models. With the sharp edge of the blade facing away from you, lay the blade flat against the skin, not edge down, but edge away and the blade laying flat.
Press the blade down against the hide and firmly push the knife away from you, down the beam, across the hide in a scraping motion. With the hide stretched over the fleshing beam, if you tube skinned your critter you can roll the skin as you go turning up a new area to flesh each time.
A skife knife, sometimes called a draw knife, has two handles and a wide flat blade. One handle on each end of the blade, one for each hand...yeah you see where I'm going with this
Continue to scrape the meat and fat off, rolling the hide as you go until you feel you have fleshed it adequately.
You will come across large chunks of meat from time to time, so it's best to have your skinning knife handy and they can be cut away before attempting to scrape them off with your skife knife.
Any part of the hide that you cannot really get a good flat stroke with your skife knife will have to be worked on with your skinning knife also. A good example is the ear nubs. If you left most of the inside ear nubs on your hide when you skinned the animal they will literally be surrounded by meat. The ear nubs either need to be cut off closer to the head skin or that meat needs to be removed. Meat left behind will 90% of the time lead to hair slippage on the ears.
When you get good enough you can literally turn the ears inside out and fill them with salt to prevent this. If your fleshing a hide to send out to be tanned and you can't get all the meat off the ears, be sure and pack them nubs full of salt. On them, around them, in them, until they are dry. I like to turn the ears inside out on hides that come in here to thoroughly tan them and to add one more step against slippage. Turning ears takes lots of practice, not something everyone need be concerned with, but it's a good safe gaurd against slippage.
The faces of your hides are another delicate area. Don't try to use your skife knife on the face.
A good trick I learned years ago is to take a light bulb, bulb up, feed it in through the mouth of your hide and press it up against the inside of the head. Drape the rest of the face down over the bulb and by squeezing the whole works you force that bulb up against the inside of the hide and with the other hand you can whittle the meat away with your skinning knife. The bulb gives you a hard, smooth, rounded, surface to press the hide against with your knife. They make wooden tools for this, some call them bull horns, or fleshing horns, similiar to the end of a ball bat for those interested.
When fleshing faces you want to take as little as possible off when working on the muzzle of your critter. Scraping to deep will cut the cuticle of the whiskers and they will fall out. It will appear as a small dark pimple or bump, simply, but carefully flesh around them.
Tails on most other then raccoons don't need to be scraped...to an extent. If you split your tails, fine and dandy. If the tails are stripped instead of split, I like to pierce the tip of it and fill it with salt before I began any tanning steps. During the tanning, I will feed a small cloth strip through the tail and out the piercing I made to help wick the tanning chemicals into the tail.
Once you feel as though you've finished fleshing your hide, you'll want to give it a good salt down.
Happy fleshing
------------------
~River Runner~
Champion Tannery
www.predatormasters.com