1st Year - Need tips on stripping big wire

Hey y'all.

I'm about 3 weeks in my apprenticeship and I'm in the civil division of the company I work for, meaning we deal with pretty darn big wires.

I had my first chance to get inside of a panel yesterday and I had to replace 3o aluminum cable with 3o copper and I had a hell of a time stripping a couple inches off to make a connection with the breaker. I will say it was quite cold out and we work almost exclusively outdoors.

I use a hawkbill klein knife as my company does not allow razor style knives (I do have one and everyone frequently uses them so I will as well, but a recent jobsite injury has made the ruler stricter). I know Klein makes a stripper tool but I couldn't find it in my area and I wasn't sure if it worked all that well or not. I also went out and bought a cheap pex cutter as another on this subreddit had suggested it to someone else. I figured it wouldn't hurt as we deal with HDPE conduit and PVC daily and if it didn't work for that use case, it would still obviously work for its intended use.

I was taught to essentially skin the top of the wire towards myself using my thumb as support but I can't find a comfortable and safe way to do this so I usually skin away from myself however I haven't quite got the feel for it so I'm either taking too little insulation off, or cutting too deeply and knicking the wire (with the price of copper and thickness I'm dealing with on a regular basis this is a bigger deal then it otherwise would be).

I've spent some freetime practicing on scraps I was given but It's really quite difficult. (They're also much smaller wire as the large wire scraps go to job budget or whatever)

I'm hoping some of you wise electricians would give me some good advice on this.

TL;DR

Frequently stripping large wire up to 750kcmil and having a tough time using hawkbill knife and razor knives, need any advice on tools or technique.