Dull a knife blade

Caught two 80 pound male hogs this morning. The Grandson and his college buddy (from Boston) were here and wanted to get the meat off of one of the hogs. The grandson is pretty good at skinning, but the Boston fellow (who has fully adopted Texas as his state forever) wanted to learn how to skin. He went through 3 very sharp blades on one little hog. Probably most of you can skin and debone a small hog and still have a decent blade edge left. It took a bit to get the edges back. Medium diamond stone, extra fine diamond stone, hard black Arkansas stone, then leather strop.

The Boston guy, who shot the hog, dragged it from the trap, took it to the barn and skinned and deboned it, said it was the most fun he ever had. Well…if that’s so, he may be a virgin, but I won’t ask. I did suggest that he, in a future post-coital moment, not tell the girl that the pig skinning was his most fun.

Now that’s funny. Good experience for him anyway.

I use cheap razor knifes and replace the blade when needed. I got tired of always having to sharpen my hunting knifes after cleaning hogs.

Well, the point I was making was that I (and many of you) can skin a deer or hog and not totally dull the blade. Then it’s easy to get it back to razor sharp. The ‘new guy’ and his first pig dulled more than one knife, forcing me to work a bit harder than normal to get the edges back.

My neighbor was over here skinning a pig a week or so ago, and his collection of 3 orange handled knives were very dull. I could tell, so I passed him one of my knives. He was shocked at how sharp it was. Then he asked if I’d sharpen his knives, and I couldn’t say no. Man, I had to start with a medium diamond plate and grind a real edge, and go with finer grit from there. Even worse, he was whacking away on joint bones, giving his knives nicks in the edges. What a mess. Hard to grind out the nicks, and I didn’t want to work that hard.

One of the knives I sharpened recently was a Buck 191, with gut hook. It seemed to dull rather quickly, but I was able to put a super sharp edge on it quickly. The steel didn’t seem as hard as my Benchmade Griptilian or my Japanese steel folding Browning knives, but it sure was easy to sharpen.

The moral here is to not let the knife blade get too dull before sharpening. Or, buy replaceable blades..

Hair and grit dull a blade fast, cut from the hide side and your blade will stay sharp a lot longer, and be easier to re sharpen.

I spray wash hogs before skinning, but not the deer. Hog skinning is tough on an edge, even if I do spray wash em.

Surprising how different color hogs turn when cleaned up a bit. The grit on their hide will surely dull a knife, and the thick hide as well.

X2

Hogs are tough on knives, that’s for sure.