I'm looking for a fleshing knife to shave deer hides, etc. with. Was thinking of a necker. Would this be a good choice for it? I want to keep the whole kife razor sharp.

Are you wanting to flesh or shave the hide? Fleshing and shaving are not the same thing? If you want to shave the hide you may want to consider getting a curriers knife. Necker is a fleshing knife but not a shaving knife. I think that Jonas Taxidermy still sells a curriers knife and the blades for it. Curriers knives can be really hard to find at times. I have a curriers knife but don't know how to sharpen and turn the blade. The blades have to be turned in a little miniature L shape. When it is sharp it will shave a hide{ thin the leather}. A necker should suffice for fleshing but not for shaving. I hope this helps.,,,Rickey

Rickey, this does help, a lot. I hadn't heard of a curriers knife, but that is what I want. I'll take a look into those.

Really? Hmmm.

I searched Van Dykes. Not a lot there. They have a combo fleshing knife/curriers-type knife. Who's thinned hides by hand and how do you do it?

Woofman, I have shaved by hand with a curriers knife and a skife knife. It is labor intense but does a very good job. The curriers knife blade will dull so get a finger steel to straiten the edge. I do not know how to resharpen them however and after sharpening the blade edge needs to turned. I don't know how to effectively do that either. Someone might can answer that on the taxidermy site. I think that John Janelli can do it, but I have not been able to get info on how to do it myself. If you are going to do a lot of tanning you might want to consider getting a shaving/fleshing machine; also called a round knife. I don't own one because they are a bit expensive but if I did a lot of tanning or taxidermy I would own one. You can read a lot about them on the taxidermy site. It is taxidermy.net. You can also shave a hide with a skife but it will take forever. A skife uses injector razor blades. Most shaving is done after the hide is tanned.,,,Rickey

Kre, It seemed that maybe you wanted to disagree with me over the necker not being a shaving knife. It is perfectly OK with me if you want to disagree; it want hurt my feelings or anger me. Maybe you have been able to thin the leather{shave} with one and if so I would like to know about it. I use a sheffield to flesh and it will shave the hair on my arm but it is not very effective to curry a tanned hide but I don't claim to know everything. In fact I am usually wrong. Thanks,,,Rickey

Thanks for the info Rickey.