Sheffield Rhino Folding Lockback Utility Skinning Knife

An odd knife that does a good job, and performs well as a skinner. Cleanup was tougher on this knife vs. others I've used, but if you don't want to sharpen a knife then you have to pay the cost somewhere. All in all, it's a good sturdy knife that should do everything it's meant to do. It even worked well with standard utility blades when my old Stanley utility knife bit the dust, and I had to finish my flooring project.

Pros

Cons

This item first caught my eye at the SHOT Show. I'd seen folding utility knives before, but this one had such a funky-shaped blade that I had to stop and check it out.

The Sheffield guy said the reason behind it was that folks had been using Sheffield folding utility knives to skin deer. Say what? With that ultra-pointed blade, a utility knife is about the worst skinner I can think of. But these fans said, "It's better than sharpening a knife."

Okay, so we live in a disposable world. Folks want a replaceable-blade skinning knife, they get one. Supply and demand, and all that.

The fact is, there are people in the world who hate to sharpen knives, or believe that they can't, and this is absolutely the best skinning knife I have seen for those folks. Blade gets dull or rusty? Carefully dispose of it in a trash can so nobody gets hurt, slap in a new blade, and get to skinning.

The curved "Rhino" blade is perfect for deer and hog skinning chores, and ought to work well on other critters too. A curved blade helps prevent a skinning knife from going places it shouldn't, like through the hide or into the meat. I tried this knife along with a couple of Leatherman knives when I had four hogs piled up needing to be skinned. It worked like a champ, just exactly as you'd expect a razor-sharp curved blade to perform.

Cleanup was not nearly as easy with this knife as with most... most knives I can just rinse and wipe and set aside to dry. The Rhino needs a bit more care. I removed the blade, cleaned it and the place it mounts in the knife, then opened up the blade storage compartment and removed the spare blades, which had gotten wet. These blades will rust, so I laid them out on paper towels to dry.

Once dry, I put everything back together and all was well again.

This knife also works well with standard utility blades.

- Russ Chastain