Decades in making, salmon-deboning machine going to market

[unhappycamper]

http://www.adn.com/2014/06/22/3529468/decades-in-the-making-salmon-deboning.html?sp=/99/171/



Melissa Hart / UAF Geophysical InstituteFormer UAF Geophysical Institute machine shop assistant manager Tim Manning demonstrates the Pinbone Wizard machine on March 1, 2007, while shop manager Greg Shipman watches in the Geophysical Institute garage. The machine has an opening in the top from which metal discs protrude slightly. When the user positions a fish fillet over the opening, the discs pull the pin bones out without damaging the flesh.

Decades in making, salmon-deboning machine going to market
By SUZANNA CALDWELL
June 22, 2014 Updated 13 hours ago

Despite the name, don't confuse the Pinbone Wizard with the classic The Who song about a pinball phenom.

Although, once you see the machine in action, quickly and efficiently pulling tiny pin bones out of a salmon filet without wrecking the meat, it's hard not to walk away with the descending chord progression of the classic rock 'n roll song stuck in your head.

After more than 20 years in the making, a Juneau-based manufacturer recently bought the patent licenses for the "Pinbone Wizard" with the hopes of building and selling the machine, which is designed to do exactly what its name suggests: Pull pin bones out of fish.

Numerous prototypes and versions later, the machine is ready for market, according to designers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. They have hopes to market the machine to fishermen and small fish processing facilities across Alaska.

[intaglio]

1. My mother told a story from when she was training as a nurse

The sister in charge of the nurses home (this was prior to WWII) looked up from her breakfast, where she had correctly de-boned a kipper, and observed that she would love to see a surgeon doing the same thing.