While I was skunked on lobsters the last two hunts of lobster season I did find a large conch with a great shell. Here are the conch cleaning tools all laid out: a Dewalt drill with masonry bit, long screw driver for cutting the conch muscle connector, pliers to pull the conch out, sharp knife for cutting off the non-edible parts, table knife for skinning the conch.
After drilling the 3/8" hole between 3rd and 4th spirals, take your screwdriver and sever through the muscle and connecting tissue that allows the conch to hang onto the shell.
Grab the conch by the foot with your pliers and slowly pull him out of the shell. If he won't come out, use the screwdriver some more as you haven't cut through all the connective tissue. Once you have cut through he cant hold on and you just have to pull steady and gently so the suction breaks free. If you pull too hard, the foot will break off and you and the conch will be out of luck.
Here he is out of the shell. Now you basically cut off/out everything that is not white meat.
After trimming off the orange ring you will see the digestive track, a black line that runs up one side. Slice up this track and clean out all the black and yellow stuff.
Take your butter knife and carefully trim under the grey skin. Once you have the skin starting to come off you can grab it with your pliers (for American novices or your teeth for Bahamian experts) and pull all the grey skin off the white meat.
And here's your conch meat, ready for smashing with the tenderizer hammer and frying up for fantastic cracked conch hor d'oeurves.
Meanwhile, most of the discarded parts, especially the orange ring, go into another baggy as this is your fantastic bait that snappers, grunts and other reef fish can't resist. Note that the hard eye protrusions with the grey skin aren't favorites with the fish. The orange tissue is the best.
And here is your beautiful conch shell. Cleaning it is another lesson, but a wire brush for the outside and week long soaking in the ocean for little critters to clean out what's left of the conch inside will do the trick. Don't stick your nose in the shell till the sealife have done their job.
