How many of u guys use a boneless band saw blade? My company completely did away with them. We now use a horizontal slicer, or a knife to cut all our boneless stuff
-- Edited by kingofcubes on Wednesday 30th of March 2011 07:53:34 AM
I think I may have been the first meat cutter in Atlanta, Ga. to have one, I bought it myself. I worked for A&P and was a cutting room relief man for the others for their vacations. I took it to every store I went to. their was 4 other cutters after seeing mine and using it got one for their self,after about a year the company started putting them in the markets. I love them if you got volume and you CLEAN it and dry it off after every use.
I don't think you need to use them in anything under 25,000. when I used mine I only cut for the day or just a little over. never wanted to cut more than I could move in a day and a half.
I used a slicer for cutting thin meat for my Hispanic trade.
At this point in my career I'll do anything I can to make the work easier on my body. If I'd have been using one my whole career maybe my shoulders wouldn't hurt so much! I've seen a lot of guys knife cutting that's pretty rough compared to bnls. saw. Doorstops drive me crazy!
Ok, I personally HATE hand cutting, as I have issues with my shoulder and elbow...(had a horse pull my arm out of socket a few years ago and tore my rotor cuff and messed up my elbow) I still cut strips and ribeyes by hand, and chucks....but sirloin tips are my evil little bastards, I cant cut them straight to save my soul...so I use the boneless blade to cut them.Boneless pork is not a problem, but I like cutting the cutlets on the saw as it is faster for me to do...I feel the saw makes a prettier more even cut. Hand cutting around here is just sloppy, and I think that is why my sales are up this week, as the guy who was filling in till I got trained, hand cut everything, and I was getting phone calls at home from people bitching about the uneven cuts of meat...SO, what do you do in a situation like this? Please let me know your take on this, as I would like some input on this....OH and our meat is only in the case 2 days...
Hey girl,number one stop the calls at home,not good for ya.Give the task to your meat cutters that there are no door stopper at all.Be up front with them all.Doesn't matter if the steaks are done ny knife or saw.Quality is number one.You won't buy it neather will the customer.I love cutting with the knife.
Tia, I've worked with so many cutters that can't seem to cut straight even with the saw! I like to have every cut I put out look good enough on BOTH sides to be a good value to the customer! Not all cuts are created equal so some you need to "overcompensate" by a little extra trim. An old saying in the meat business is "your first loss is your BEST loss" meaning if you lose a little with extra trim it still beats having to bring it back re-wrap it, mark it down a couple times, grind it, pitch it etc. What a lot of cutters don't understand is that if you put a couple scrub cuts,door stops etc. out with every item you cut, those just get passed over by the customers and pretty soon you got a whole counter full of this $@#*! Sirloin tips are kind of knarly cause the grain goes several different ways. If you want to knife cut them nice and straight try cutting them in half first. So many knuckles now are just nubs (IBP) not much to them. I split them in half then turn them slightly so you cut across grain (not the way their broke) My policy is every package matters then when people go down the case it's pretty impressive, and they notice. The only calls you'll get is to tell you how nice your case looks!
My shop is unique in one old fashioned way. We have tons of help. We have 3 saws where I work but no boneless blades. We have the help available to knife everything bone in and boneless and you'd be written up or disallowed to cut that item if you ever buzzed a knifeable item. I've used them lots of times at former jobs. Also, sometimes I work my day off at Safeway where most stores have them. I think there's nothing wrong with using boneless blades at a lot of shops. It depends on the amount you're cutting or selling and the amount of help you have to do it. If you have an ad item that's super cheap and you have to cut a pallet of that item, for sure use the saw. However, I'm totally against dirtying a clean saw to cut one item. Even a full cut round. I can knife it pretty nicely and the saw will still be clean. I know that when I come to a new shop on what would have been my day off, one of the worst things I could do is to go against their system. You're not going to impress anyone with your knifing skills. They will just get mad that you're slowing things down and you probably won't be welcome back.
