I own a pair of the WASCO fleshing shears and use them for a lot of the rough fleshing that I do. I find the size and quality of the blades to be excellent. However, the size of the finger holes is unbelievably tiny. After about ten minutes, I have to take a break and let my cramped fingers recuperate. Any other experience using other shears for fleshing -that are more friendly to big chubby fingers? Thanks and happy Easter!
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The shears are for finish fleshing rather than rough fleshing. I'd use a draw knife if I didn't have a fleshing machine, but I still rough flesh with my scalpel (or ulu on boars and bears). Van Dykes used to offer a pair of stainless steel full sized, curved bladed, scissors that works great on such jobs. Don't know if they still carry them or not.
I use the type shears you're talking about for final touchup after the hide is tanned and before it's mounted.
Take a look at these. They are chrome moly with large,flexible, plastic coated handles. www.joycechen.com Culinary stores have them or you can do a search for a vendor with the lowest price.
I found some shears at Home depot that are awesome. They are black handled utility type shears made by Fiskers. I have also bought some other orange handled ones that are awesome as well. The black ones are stainless so they won't rust like the WASCO ones. You can also buy the ones that WASCO sells at home depot in the electrical department for 10 bucks. The fiskars were 9 bucks and much better.
...that will suit your needs. They make some of the best scissors out there imho.
I had trouble on the other end of the spectrum (sort of). I use the big holed shears for fleshing fish and it always use to hurt my fingers (depending on the angle and leverage I was putting on the shears). I've since wrapped the finger holes with some cheap spongey foam (wrapped in electrical tape) to "soften" the edge. It works fairly well. But, I'm going to switch to duct tape because the black keeps coming off the electrical tape (from washing the scissors). But all in all, the extra padding helps save my fingers from the tiny little (painful) bruises the shears use to cause w/o the padding...