I;m gonna ask a question that has been asked before but anyway here goes.I;m thinking of purchaseing a fleshing machine.I am currently useing the benchgrinder n wirewheel method doing my deer hides and honestly am pretty comfortable with it. i can turn a hide out in about 50 minutes.I would like to have a much nicer piece of equipment tho.Can i turn out a hide with a fleshing machine any faster?And since there are so many machines out on the market. what or which is the machine of choice? thanks for any reply. Ray ,happy holidays.
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I won't attempt to answer your question because I don't have the experience, but to me it would seem that if you are going to get a good answer, you need to give some more information. What exactly are you doing when you "turn a hide out", green fleshing? splitting lips, eyes? Are you tanning or using DP? Are you pickling hides and then shaving them thin? Unless others know how much you are doing with your current method, it would be difficult to give advice as to if a f.m. would be faster.
This is just me, but I flesh the meat and fat off on a beam, and use the fleshing machine to shave the hide after pickling. I have used the maching in the past for green fleshing, but since it's in my basement, I prefer to leave the green hides outside in my skinning shed. The face work I do with a scalpel.
I get a much more evenly shaved cape using the Fleshing machine.
It takes maybe 20 miutes to flesh out the hide with my Eager Beaver fleshing machine.
I also get nicely shaved piece 6"x3" to make repairs with. I can fleshout a cape everything but the eyelids, black area of the nose, and lips, sometimes even the lips. I normally do those areas by hand.
I still do small mammals on my bird wheel, a few suirts of denatured alcohol on the hide sets the membrane up and you can wheel the hide in just a few minutes.
a green hide over a frozen then thawed hide but thats just me.Yes i;m talking about removeing all the red meat n fat. then shaving down the hideand then salting.I let it set up un a large piece of ply wood to drain. then i wash the hide ,tumble and then do my finish work on the hide shaving a second time. i use the ben mears spray tan method currently.i;m just basicaly talking about the machine in general. what would be the best buy for the money. the best machine the more user friendly machine.
We all have our personal choices and certainly, you can't expect an objective answer from manufacturers. We're about as bad. "You should buy a XXXOOO flesher cause it's a piece of crap I'm stuck with and you should suffer too." LOL. Look around. The GOOD one start at about $500 but the GREAT ones start at about $1200. If you want that with fries, you're going to have to buy the expensive hamburgers.
By the way The wife ordered me your tuck tool. lol. Thanks for all the replies. Merry Christmas /Happy Holidays.
I too use a wire wheel on deer capes. Would like to know what size and brand that you prefer? I am having some trouble with bristles breaking off. Thanks , James
The wire wheel must be ran against a 2x4 until the wires are leaning back, then trim the stray wires, run the wheel again and trim them. You can use a gringer wheel dreeser against the wire wheel and it will then make any near wires breaking, do so.
Use the best wire wheel you can find, not the cheap ones, the cheap ones have less wires and dont work well.
I use a Makita 4 inch grinder with a braided wheel....works great. Even on Buffalo.