Whats the best tool to sharpen a two handled fleshing knife. I just bought a post knife and need to sharpen it.

Was it brand new?

If you can cut yourself with your fleshing knife, it is too sharp. You can sharpen it some for fleshing the tail grisslel off of your beaver pelts, but other than that, I would leave it the way it is. If you have a sharp fleshing knife, you will cut so many holes in your pelts that most likely you will have to throw away a few of them and sew almost every one of them.

I have a Post flesher I bought this spring and after 200 coon I have not had to touch it however when I purchased mine I asked Ron Post how to sharpen and he recommended steel or if you have the crossing ceramic rods just lay it in the V of the ceramics and pull it through a couple of times.

Hope this helps

Greg H

2ndGen Trapper is right. If you get a small wrinkle in the pelt ,with a real sharp fleshing knife your garenteed to cut it . With a sharp knife you also shave too close and cut the roots of the hair . Then the hair falls out easily . Any obsticals that you may not see in the fur will cause a cut when you try to flesh past it .

I use a regular knife to clean the edge and after 200 coon it is razor sharp. Not good because I found out the hard way, I took my index finger and was swiping the fat off it and sliced it wide open. So out came the super glue. Live and learn! You don't need them razor sharp, just clean.

When you guys do your fleshing do your use a scraping motion or do you use a slicing motion to cut the flesh or gristle off.

I don't know about you guys but I use a lot of sawdust when I'm fleshing. Our fox and beaver and otter are usually pretty fat, so I get fine sawdust from the local highschool shop. Just ask the shop teacher...usually there's a big vacuum that sucks the dust from the shop and you can get into it and fill your tote or whatever.

The Arctic foxes were the greasiest. Oodles of fat! I skin everything not worrying about fat and meat and then place it on the fleshing beam, put a huge handful of sawdust on the neck area and begin scraping from there...adding handfulls of sawdust as I need. It really soaks up any grease and fat and you can see pockets you missed too. The skins are incredibly light after that...afterwards, I salt and freeze them until I'm ready to put them in the Pro-Tanner's Solution. I'll add a couple pics on a different post.