Buddy has performed flawless today. Great to be back on hardwater instead of a stiff couch.
Days are getting numbered locally. 8 " ice but its very air bubbles or what ever the term. Crack off the point creeping farther.
Aside from that, maybe I'm still under the weather or maybe just toast but looking forward to digging the Daisy out before thaw

Glad yinz is feeling better HT and back on the ice.

Do not waste money on this piece of junk.
My son bought it last November when we were processing meats as a back up to the 50 year old slicer we had. We never used or opened it until yesterday.
All plastic gears, parts . The thickness gauge is a joke.
Buyer beware.

My wife and I used to run a corned beef and cabbage dinner for our church .  We got the meat at wholesale from a restaurant owner we knew who was right around the corner from the church, got a lot of Sunday Breakfast business from us.  Corned beef, no matter how it is cooked, can be a b**** to slice , and dulls every knife I've used faster than about anything.  The restaurant owner loaned us a Blodgett slicer she had, but rarely used.  It was amazing, cutting up a couple of hundred servings of beef with the slicer and a postal scale turned a major drudge into a pretty good time and cut an hour or so off the time, and produced a good looking product (we "eyeball" sliced the beef onto lite butcher paper, weighed on a tared plate on the scale, and added or subtracted to make uniform portions, stacked the paper/beef units in oven pans, then added the broth from the pot everything was cooked in to soak the beef and paper, and reheated in an oven).  I kept my eye out for a Blodgett for years, great heavy duty tool, until I went to an auction where one sold for over a grand and the buyer was elated that he got such a good deal.  With that experience, I always looked at that Cabella's unit with a grain of salt as it is pretty inexpensive (although certainly not cheap, I'm remembering a few hundred bux?)).
I decided these units were designed for the person doing one deer, a few fish, this and that, per year, and not for someone doing all their own food or using it frequently.  

We have a commercial slicer at work that i been trying to get and has been idle since our cafeteria shut down around 2009. I don't recall the brand but when I looked up its cost , it was around $11,000.
There is a ton of industrial equipment that just sits locked in a room but I can't get my company to release, or at least offer to employees to bid on and remove.
Sadly there will come a day it will just be wasted space for a new office and get tossed into a dumpster to make room for a new computer.

So on a lighter note :
I really haven't bought any new gear in awhile. My hunting and fishing equipment has been pretty solid for many years now and while I use a lot of it often, I'm in no need of upgrades.

One/2 things that I do now struggle with are good knives. I mean real knives, not the box stores shelves these days.
It seemed like when i was young you could go to a sporting shop and buy a quality Case buck or uncle buck for under a 20 spot.
Today you still can but the quality is shot.
Right now most of my hunting I'm still using my grandfather's given to me 2 blade folding Case knife. It holds an edge forever, sharpens easily and works well for gutting and skinning with different blades. A lock blade was not invented then so caution mused be used.
Any knives I've bought for fillet or cutting in about last , gosh many years suck.

2 fold.
Reccomend a good butchering set
Reccomend a good filet knife.
The standards are not working for the amount of cutting do

Do you have any knife makers about? You will pay, but get the quality to go with it.

I do . Yes way to expensive, I can't do hundreds per. Some of my friends built their own from teaching, to time consuming and without right tools me to do myself.
If there is a really good proper set or equal combination that falls in the 500 range, that's where I'm at

A piece of "high carbon" flat stock plus a table top grinder, add some patients and away you go. From butt to tang, bolster and blade, all ground to shape on the grinder

Tempering is best done using a forge but can be accomplished with a torch. Best to have a good tempering chart to know when the steel reaches the precise temp to dunk it in the oil.

Important to use "high carbon steel" which most knives do not and is why most knives today... suck.

2nd rate makers today, promote "stainless steel" which requires constant sharpening because they lose their edge so easily. To boot, the stupid things are difficult to hone a keen edge.

With high carbon steel it's a few passes, now and then on a wet stone, steel, or strap.

Some food for thought, dishwashers will take the keen edge off of any highly sharpened knife when using dishwasher detergent. Dishwasher detergents often contain corrosive alkaline salts. A keen edge is very thin.


About that high carbon steel.... industrial hacksaw blades were the sought after material, back in the day.


Handles.... buck horn, of course. No rivets just A bit of epoxy is all that's needed.

It's worth the patients.

P.S. Some files, emery cloth and a buffing wheel come in handy too.

BTDT, don't you have to be a doctor to have patients?