what type of grind does a cleaver have?

big thick cleavers usually have a slack grind.
those thin yan can cook style cleavers are usually flat ground. more of a chefs knife kind of use to them though, where the normal thick slack ground cleaver is for butcher type uses, hacking your way through some bone while breaking down a cow
 
Let's separate "cleaver" to cleave or split bone from "chinese chef's knife". While they have similar silhouettes ,one slices and one splits. In fact the chinese have a number of knives that look the same except for thickness and grind. My cleavers are V ground with double bevel .It's necessary to have a fairly obtuse bevel so it won't be destroyed when hitting bone.Cleavers also are thicker so they will have the necessary weight to go through bone.
 
thanks mete i should have worded that better.
i do know the difference, just figured i'd word it that way because there's a common mis conception between the two. i use a chinese style chef knife at work every day and the rest of the gorilla cooks call it a cleaver because they don't really know any better.
thanks for the clarification:thumbup:
 
Hi, Knifeaholic

I like a convex grind right down to a fine edge. I'm including a link to a few pics of a cleaver I used to make quite a few of ten - twelve years ago. It was sharp enough to push through a paperback book easily, but would also cut bone with no damage to the edge or easily take down relatively large (9 inches in diameter) trees. It was also a lot more useful in the kitchen than anything forged out of 5 /16 stock had any right to be. I still use the first cleaver I ever made. Sorry for the poor quality pics. They were taken from a video I made way back then.

http://www.fototime.com/users/OleyFermo@aol.com/Cutting

Jimmy Fikes
 
Wow, Dan, those are two very impressive videos! :thumbup: When I log off, I'm out to the shop to start cutting up magazines!:)

The few cleavers I've made were convexed to sharpness, from old sawblade steel, about 5/32", I think. I've looked at quite a few old cleavers in antique flea markets, and all had rather thick convex edges. They were made for chopping through bone when cutting up a whole beef or hog, I believe. My Granddad was a country butcher of sorts, but he prefered to cut around joints when possible and use a bandsaw when he had to when cutting up a whole carcass. I never saw him use a cleaver, or heard of it, locally.

Todd
 
History channel has a program on butchering . An old film of butchers showed a REAL cleaver - the blade and handle each were about 20-24" long !!!! He used a two hand hold.
 
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