Why is a curved belly knife so good for skinning?

L

Lavan

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Nov 8, 2000
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Been meaning to ask but keep forgetting. I have never hunted big game. Lots of birds, rabbits, and squirrels. But they are all easily skinned with a pocket knife.

I keep reading about how good a big bellied curved swept blade is for skinning. I assume for big game.

How is it done and why is a belly better than a regular drop point or something like that?

:confused:
 
I'm not going to articulate this well, but here goes....

You can skin all day with a drop point, but generally speaking: the belly in a skinning knife lends itself to longer cuts and lets you get more sweep into a cut. That translates to less work, less punctured hide, a longer cutting surface and an easier overall job of skinning.

You can sort of prove this out using just your hands: use your right hand for the knife, and your left hand for the animal. You'll see that when you curve your hand (like the belly of a skinner), the edge of your hand lends itself better to keeping more edge in contact with what you're trying to cut.

The world's absolute WORST skinning knife is a Cold Steel San Mai Master Tanto: total lack of belly, double the sharp points to puncture hide.... but hey, when it's all you can find at 0300 it'll do the job too.

Hope that helped.
 
Lavan, listen to Rainmaker870. Especially the part about punctured hides. A prominent point is death on hides. A hide with a bunch of small cuts is practically useless to anyone. If you know what an "ulu" is, you'll get the idea of a near perfect knife to remove the hide from an animal -- all belly! I prefer what is called a "semi-skinner" which is a sort of cross between a pure skinning knife and a drop point. ...and I've peeled over 600 deer and elk hides -- wish I'd shot that many, but I used to work in our family's game processing plant.

Bruce
 
What you don't want on a skinning knife is a sharp corner or point on the leading edge. A sharp corner on the front of the edge (such as you find on box cutters or sheeps foot blades) will work for many utility functions, but not all. They excel at cutting arbitrary curves or making straight cuts in uniform materials like cardboard. The leading edge corner digs in and cuts where you point it. It is bad to have the leading corner when you want to seperate materials at their natural boundaries, such as when you are skinning game or otherwise dismantling a compound structure. The leading corner will tend to cross the material boundaries and cut into areas where you don't want it to go. A broad curved edge will follow the boundary between the material without snagging.
 
I did not skin any large wild animal, but I did skin plenty of lamb.
The main reason I bought skinner was because when I skinnedlamb (or horse) my hand became very tired. I could not pay proper attention to my work and made a lot of holes in the skin (do you call it "hide"?). A knife with sharp point makes holes because you touch the skin first with the point and then with the belly. Skinner - it is difficult to make a hole because you touch skin by belly and it is difficult to reach the point unless you take knife wrong way. Also, skinner saves a lot of time and makes the job much easier. Also, skinners are made more ergonomic for skinning, therefore your hand does not get tired as quick as with other knives. But you can feel the difference only when you skin large animals. Skinning small animals is fine with any knife.
Additional comments: when you want to slit the throat to a lamb, you would prefer to have large blade because it take less strokes to reach the spine, so
the animal suffers less. Also, it is more convenient. Skinner is not good for this job.
Regards,
 
Good advice and interesting reading. Tell me - what is a caping (not camping!) knife, and how is it used in the process of removing a skin from an animal? I get the impression it's preferred for the fine work around the head, but that's a guess.
 
You're exactly right, Chris. A caping knife is a relatively small, straight, SHARP blade used for finessing the hide off the skull, around the ears, eyes, lips, etc. It's a delicate job that requires a small sharp blade and a fair amount of experience (read screw-ups from previous attempts.) Bob Dozier makes several smaller knives that would be excellent capers; I don't know if he makes one called a Caper or not, but the Gentlemen's knife, canoe knife, whittler and some others would probably fit the bill. There's another one called the Sweetwater that might work.... check his site out and look under hunting knives.

Other choices that I've seen work well are slipjoint clip or spey blades, etc. Small, sharp, straight and controllable are the keys: not much stress on the blade during that operation, but good edge holding is a plus (in my experience, a full skinning job is a great test for a knife's innate ability to hold an edge.

Hope this helps.
 
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