Cleaver Project: ID and Ideas?

swellcat

swellcat

Member
Recently, I had the opportunity (someone else's kitchen) over several days to use a cleaver for the first time and found the knife surprisingly handy. (And so begins CAD, Cleaver Acquisition Disorder? Maybe not, but the one below needed rescuing. The steel and the learning experience ought to be worth five dollars . . . plus, a functional feral-pig chopper may result.)

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Blade Length: 7 1/2 in.
Height, Tallest: 4 1/2 in.
Overall Length: 14 in.
Weight: 24 oz.


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Looks as though someone went metal-on-metal with it, maybe as a wood-splitting chisel or something. The steel seems pretty soft: it deforms and files easily.


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A sturdy Osage orange handle will feel nice and help balance out the heavy blade, I think.


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Would you ignore these areas of damage or maybe do more material-removal and take the bevel higher up on the blade?


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Recognize or make-out the maker?


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Guess I'd be terrible at Wheel of Fortune; I searched multiple letter combinations last night with no good results.

Thanks for any insight and suggestions you might offer.

 
that is cool.
I would hang it in the garage just like it is and every now and then take it down, admire it, find something to chop and hang it back up until I did that again next time.
t
 
My guess would be JGS & ??GER CO MOBILE AL. I looks like it had a hard cutting edge forge welded to a soft back. That puppy goes back to the days before meat cutting saws.

Doug
 
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if you want one to learn with and see how you liike cleavers, you should be able to find one by "Old Hickory" for less than $20. The one I have had for 20 years has a 6 1/2" x 2 1/2" 1095 blade. It takes and holds a nice edge.
If you are a maker, try aldo's 1084. I made one 7" x 3" x 1/8" with a 5 1/2" dogwood handle. tempered the blade to Rc62, the total blade angle is less than 20. slices tomatoes so thin you can see thru them.
the old sailor
 
. . . slices tomatoes so thin you can see thru them
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After using one (smaller than the hefty in this thread), that's a lot more believable. That sort of thing—that a reasonable cleaver can do a fair bit of what my 7" Wusthof chef's knife does—is what was the pleasant surprise.

I watched a few cleaver auctions, and they all went relatively rich. Then there's the heavy-arsed shipping. This beast needed liberating.


. . . looks like it had a hard cutting edge forge welded to a soft back.
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I'll have to research forge-welding. It does look something like delamination, doesn't it.

My guess would be JGS & ??GER CO MOBILE AL
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Good guess. I wondered maybe "JOS" and "CAL.", but a knife of Alabama steel would be cool . . . especially if it is from the BOOGER Steel CO of Mobile.


. . . hang it in the garage just like it is and every now and then take it down, admire it, find something to chop and hang it back up until I did that again next time.
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I'm gonna hang it in the kitchen, admire it, and use it even more often, but without the rust and the dust falling out of it, preferably.:1:

(Hope the pheasants are having a good year in your state. Harvested my first one just outside of Rochester in 1982.)

Thank you for the replies.
 
I would use Scotchbrite pads by hand or belts on my 2 x 72" machine to get the rust off of it and just clean up the edge till it is sharp. That is a Blunt Force trauma weapon! lol.

The hammering on the spine may have been done going through pelvic, leg and other heavy bone.

Very nice find! There is a bit of a resurgence of traditional type butcher shops and deli type restaurants that want big blades like that for some use and display
 
swellcat said:
After using one (smaller than the hefty in this thread), that's a lot more believable. That sort of thing—that a reasonable cleaver can do a fair bit of what my 7" Wusthof chef's knife does—is what was the pleasant surprise.

I watched a few cleaver auctions, and they all went relatively rich.

Thank you for the replies.
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for me, a tired old sailor with large hands and arthritis, my cleavers are a lot easier to use than my 4star elephant chef's knife. here is the basic one I was talking about http://www.ebay.com/itm/Ontario-Kni...958?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item46129b763e
scott
 
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Crudest of the crude, especially for the hours of filing and hand-planing that went into the bone-dry Osage orange, but no one else was gonna fool with the old, bashed blade, and it is more usable now than when found.

 
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