scaling machines

[ch312]

does anyone have first hand experience using automatic scalers? is it worth spending some money on a store bought unit? has anyone made their own?

 

ill be using it for panfish...

[Roy]

How many do you want to do? Why don't you just skin them?

[aplumma]

I think he is opening a fish and chip stand on Rice Lake Roy.

 

 

Art

[dave524]

I always have nailed a few bottle caps on the end of a scrap piece of lumber when I wanted to scale fish for a change, worked well for me

[DanD]

I picked up one of the Bear Paw electric scaler and they work pretty well; a couple of passes per side and the scales are gone.

It’s more or less a dermal motor that drives an arbor through a cable. The plastic teeth on the arbor are just aggressive enough to grab the scales but not so to tear the skin. You can actually run the thing against your hand and it doesn’t hurt; I let the kids use the thing, as their part of the cleaning.

Got it on-line at Bass Pro, it was around $125.00 I think?

I’ve seen a few of the different small drum types and none of them worked as well as this thing does.

Oh yea, why scale perch; you throw half the flavor away when you skin them.

 

Dan.

[adempsey]

I have watched a couple different scalers in the past, but never used owned one. One was a drum type that rotated horizontally in a plastic bin. This thing kept jamming up, but maybe he overloaded it, I don't know. The other was an old industrial potato peeler. That worked quite well.