JohnV wrote:JohnV wrote:JohnV wrote:SCJ429 wrote:I'm with John, so much easier the butcher properly if the meat can set in a cooler rather than trying to take it apart when it is still warm and like jelly.
Yeah makes it way easier . We used to cut down the center spine with an electric chainsaw that had never seen any oil . Then I would cut into 4 parts between the second and third rib so it left more on the T bone . Makes it easier to handle later in a cool room because if you have to cut a side in half in the cool room the forequarter on a big steer is heavy and easy to drop on the floor . You can cut to the spine and then hook the foreleg up on the rail and then cut the spine but it's still hard work . Then it's not hanging the best way to do the forequarter cuts so you have to hook it again in the second rib and reverse the hang .
Sheep are way easier and you can split the spine in the cool room and do all the cuts with the sheep on the block or just cut across all the right places on the whole carcass and split the sections with a hand saw . Which is the way I liked to do it because it's easy to run off center on the spine of a sheep while hanging . I eventually learnt to run a knife cut down the center first as a guide but it was hard work and easy to make a mess of it . Anything I screwed up would go into my meat share so the boss never saw it ha ha.