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

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As a last resort, if you can't find bone-saw blades in your area, purchase the coarsest-toothed hacksaw blade you can find, and make do.

Meat cleaver: Of the three basic butchering tools—bone saw, knife, and meat cleaver—the cleaver is the easiest to get along without. Although this wicked-looking tool has a variety of uses in the hands of a professional butcher, its primary function for a first-timer is chopping through such softer, smaller bones as ribs. The implement can be a worthwhile investment if you plan to do a lot of butchering—but don't feel that you must have one to get an occasional meat-cutting job done properly.

Knives: The way I learned which styles of knives were best for meat cutting was by experimentation: I gathered up every hunting, fishing, kitchen, and butcher knife I owned; borrowed as many more as I could from friends; and gave each of them an on-the-job audition. Try it! Assuming that all the blades you've gathered up are equally and sufficiently sharp, it won't take long to identify the sizes and designs best suited to your style of meat cutting.

For example, my personal butchering technique involves boning out the meat. That means I do a lot of precision cutting, much of it in tight spots that would cramp the style of a wide-bladed butcher knife. For doing that type of work, the best choice is a long, thin-spined, narrow-bladed design called (what else?) a boning knife. Such knives are similar in appearance to fish filleters and are available most anyplace that sells cutlery. My longtime personal favorite is a custom model that I ground to shape from a rusty old butcher knife I found at a garage sale, but any good filleting knife with a substantial handle (as opposed to the shapeless and skimpy grips so common to the cheaper versions) will do the trick.

KEEP 'EM SHARP

Most professional-quality butcher knives are made of carbon steel, which is relatively soft a? steels go, will corrode if neglected, and is certain to darken and discolor. But for all those apparent flaws (none of which is actually a hindrance), I prefer carbon-steel blades because they sharpen easily, hold an edge well, and are less brittle than their stainless counterparts.

Carborundum is a trade name for a synthetic stone used to sharpen carbon-steel blades. Carborundum stones are inexpensive and come in a variety of sizes and grits. One handy configuration is a stone made of two thin pieces that are laminated to provide a coarse grit on one side and a finer sharpening surface on the other. While it's generally a good idea to use oil (or water, if no oil is available) when honing with a Carborundum stone, many users prefer to hone without the aid of a lubricant, at least when in the field.

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