Question on meat slicer

[mrad]

About a month ago i purchased a cabela's 12" commercial slicer. This was mouch more slicer than I needed, but with a sale they had going on and with a coupon I had, I was able to get for less money than their 7" slicer. The first time I used it to slice pork belly into bacon. I notice that it dove tailed the pork belly. I though this may have been happening because the belly was too long and I had to compress it  to get it all on.

Last week I borrowed it to a friend to slice venison for jerky. He does quite a bit of hunting and processes most of his meat. He texted me while he was slicing and told me the thing worked awesome.  When he returned it, I asked if it dove tailed the cuts. he said it did but that in his experience, that was normal with the meat slicers he has used. He said he just flips the meat every few slices. 

 I don't remember this happening with the $50 plastic meat slicer I used previously. Seems kind of odd that a $500 slicer would not cut straight.

Is it normal for meat slicers to dove tail the meat?

 

[roger47]

I too have that problem.  I purchased a good slicer (8 inch blade) and all of the cuts dove tailed as you call it.  If the meat is "almost" frozen, it helps a bit but as your friend stated, you must flip the meat over.  After much thought and looking at the more industrialized slicers that you would see at the butcher shop etc, I noticed that the meat enters the blade at a higher level.  Sort of at the centre of the meat, where mine, and probably yours, slices at a lower angle to the meat.  In other words, I think the meat is too far down on the cutting edge of the meat. If this is the case, there is actually less cutting surface.  This is my guess because it bothers me to no end. 

roger

 

[roger47]

 
I too have that problem.  I purchased a good slicer (8 inch blade) and all of the cuts dove tailed as you call it.  If the meat is "almost" frozen, it helps a bit but as your friend stated, you must flip the meat over.  After much thought and looking at the more industrialized slicers that you would see at the butcher shop etc, I noticed that the meat enters the blade at a higher level.  Sort of at the centre of the meat, where mine, and probably yours, slices at a lower angle to the meat.  In other words, I think the meat is too far down on the cutting edge of the meat. If this is the case, there is actually less cutting surface.  This is my guess because it bothers me to no end. 

roger

I meant to say "sort of at the centre of the blade"

 

[LanceR]

Good morning Roger

I know this is an old thread but if you are referring to slicer cutting a tapered surface on the product (and even leaving a "tail" on the trailing edge) on wide product, all gravity fed slicers tend to do the same thing. Even the Hobart 2912 and Univex 8512 I used to have did it and they retailed for $7K and $5.5K respectively.

What is happening is that the weight of the product is no longer on the gauge plate, the plate that sets the slice thickness and guides the product into the blade, and the product is dragging on the blade cover plate (or blade depending on the design). And since gravity is no longer holding the bulk of the product down on the gauge plate the product tends to lift away from the resistance at the cutting edge.

If you had a way to accurately check the thickness of each slice you'd see that they are slightly thinner at the trailing edge..... A really sharp blade tends to reduce the tendency as does slicing very cold product.


Lance