BUTCHER'S BLADES, WHICH TO OWN AND HOW TO HONE

Enlarge Image Image Gallery [1] An array of sharpening equipment. Left to right: honing oil, a small Carborundum stone, an Arkansas stone in its cedar box, a Japanese waterstone with plastic platform, a butcher's steel, and a touch-up set including a small Arkansas stone and twin ceramic honing sticks. [2] An efficient honing technique is to stroke forward in an arcing motion, as if trying to shave a thin slice from the top of the stone. [3] Remove honing burrs by pulling the blade across a butcher's steel or [4] a ceramic stick. STAFF PHOTOS

Here's the last of our three-part series on gettin' in the winter's meat without professional help.

For those who didn't see the last couple of issues of MOTHER (poor souls), allow us to set the scene by mentioning what you missed.

In issue 89, David Harper reviewed the basics of field-dressing and skinning big-game animals, such as deer and their kin, and noted that the same techniques could be put to good use when slaughtering midsize homestead livestock, such as goats and sheep. Then, in issue 90, David offered for your consideration his personal, bare-bones (literally) butchering technique... a method that may not produce the familiar, bone-in cuts of meat you're accustomed to seeing at the market, but nonetheless eliminates much of the time and work associated with more traditional approaches to meat cutting.

And here, as the third and final installment, is a look at some of the tools of the trade, with special emphasis on knives and the selection and use of various sharpening implements.

There are three types of hand tools generally associated with butchering: bone saw, cleaver, and knife. Let's take a look at each of them.

Bone saw: A bone saw resembles a hacksaw in that its most usual form is a band-type blade held in a hacksaw-type frame. Consequently, many a novice butcher assumes that the trusty ol' hacksaw hanging there on the workroom wall can double as a meat and bone cutter. Well, it can, but don't expect easy going. That's because a hacksaw has fine, shallow, closely spaced teeth that will clog up rapidly if used to cut meat and bone. A bone saw, on the other hand, has larger, deeper, wider teeth that will cut easily and quickly through flesh and bone, producing smooth, splinter-free results without clogging up.

The other significant difference between the two types of saws is in the size of the frames. While most hacksaw blades start at just under a foot in length, the most common length for a bone-saw blade is slightly over two feet. The extra size has several advantages, but price sure isn't one of them... in my area, a bone-saw frame with a 25-1/2" blade costs $50.

Fortunately, there's a way out: Most meat-packers will sell you a bone-saw blade for around $2. Buy a blade, take it home, punch out the pins in each end, use side cutters or a similar tool to cut the blade down to two hacksaw-length pieces, drill a hole in each end of each of the blades to accept the retaining pins on the hacksaw frame... and you now have a two-year supply (at least) of bone-saw blades.