skinning vbl n Cp OED ~ 2 'the removal or stripping off, of skin,' 3 ~ knife (1884).
1 In processing seal 'pelts' or 'sculps,' the separation of the skin from the attached blubber.
1883 SHEA 10 When successful, the sealers sometimes return in two or three weeks. The seals—or rather the skin and fat, the carcase being left on the ice—are quickly landed, and the one separated from the other by a process termed skinning.
2 Attrib skinning knife: long, slightly curved knife used to separate the blubber from the skin of a seal.
[1795-6] 1974 SQUIRE 84 [inventory] 1 skinning knife 1s. 6d. [1862] 1916 MURPHY 32 One man offered me a pelt worth twelve shillings for the skinning knife. 1873 CARROLL 9 The skinner stands holding the skin and fat in his left hand, removing the fat with a skinning knife in his right hand. 1924 ENGLAND 62 [He] was chipping tobacco from a plug with his skinning knife.
skinning loft: area of merchant's premises where seal 'pelts' are processed by the separation of the skin from the blubber; LOFT.
1976 Evening Telegram 19 Mar, p. 6 The seals were all skinned when they were landed on Bowring's wharf or Job's and hoisted up to the skinning loft.
skinning table: platform on which the fat is cut away from a sealskin.
[1844] GOSSE 114 [The pelts] are now skinned; for this purpose a man stands before the skinning-table, an inclined plane reaching from his middle to the ground.
