Forged cleaver WIP, or How to abuse yourself for fun...

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Mike Davis

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I decided to bring a large bar of W2 to Randy's hammer in to squish and make stuff from. I was chatting it up with Al, ChefLarge, and was playing with his cleavers...I got a wild hair up my ass...I decided i was going to forge a cleaver!!! Now...to give a heads up, forging a cleaver is a metric butt ton of work! I think seriously, there was 3-4 hours of forging involved.
W2 bar at 2.125" diameter, 11" long.

Skipping a lot of squishing



Now for the hand forging...

 
Ok, so i have it roughly forged to shape, i cleaned up the profile a bit. Form this point, it was straightened and Randy Jr. was kind enough to surface grind it for me!
This is the other half of the boat paddle we forged lol


And the cleaver before clay coating for a very crazy hamon...



Still undecided on how i am going to do the handle...Will be looking at that all day.
 
Mmmm hamon on a Cleaver, never seen that will be quite special. At some point during grinding it you will think, "no more cleavers":D
 
Looking good. Hope it turns out how you intend or better.
 
I am still undecided about what to do with the handle. i am thinking a stubby wa, maybe with some mokume spacers or something. i see a lot if cleaver handles are round, turned on a lathe...not sure if thats what i am going to do or not, but...i assure you it will be cool ;)
 
This should be painfully fun to watch. I think you should do an oval handle, with indents on the sides (sloped towards the spine, on the ferrule).
 
Ohhhhhhhhh, can't wait to see more pics...I think I can speak for all when I say that we were very happy when you got a wild hair up your ass.
 
Much better than when he gets a wild hare up his ass....
 
I'm posting here to give myself an expedient method of constantly checking this thread, as its fecking awesome. Cleaver hamon. Take that awesome.
 
oh, this is gonna be sweet: Cleaver, W2, hamon... what's not to like?

and as a side note, if anyone ever had any doubts about the metric system, the fact that it has a until of measure, the "butt ton", specifically dedicated to forging work should make up your mind.
 
I am always amazed when I see this kind or projects :) I wish I had 1% of the skills you have
 
oh, this is gonna be sweet: Cleaver, W2, hamon... what's not to like?

and as a side note, if anyone ever had any doubts about the metric system, the fact that it has a until of measure, the "butt ton", specifically dedicated to forging work should make up your mind.

It's true. We learned "metric butt ton" in school. It's equivalent to...well, it's all very advanced and hard to comprehend for non-metric users....
 
A 'wild hair up the ass' becomes a 'butt ton' and then a 'pain in the ass' and then 'oval shaped with a taper'.

Man the metric system is confusing.

I am excited to see how this works itself out!
 
Oh boy....... Don't know if Mike will ever talk to me again, after showing him my Chinese knives (cleavers)! :biggrin:

Looks awesome, brother, can't wait to see the finished product. You, my friend, are frickin amazing.
 
You guys are killing me!! Hahahaha awesome. Hope to have a little more today to show. Going to clay it and get it heat treated. Cross your fingers everyone...I think i will need it lol.
 
Ok...so it may or may not have a cool picture in the hamon....just sayin. It survived the quench, after 2 normalizing cycles, here it is
20131011_154203_zps820e8513.jpg

will work on grinding it later, it is getting 6 hours of temper.
 
So do the flowers mean it's a girly knife? You know, a knife for a girl? :wink:
 
It just may be a girly knife!!! so i did a quick amd dirty sand/etch to see (anticipation was killing me) and here she is!
20131014_225825_zps7d1a8bbe.jpg

20131014_225931_zpseaf3324f.jpg

20131014_225924_zpse4a41865.jpg

Gah...so hard to get a good hamon picture. Pretty happy that it is going where i want it. Thanks for looking :)
 
here is a grknd shot. i still ha e a ton of handsanding to do, but this will give you an idea of the grind.
20131015_092050_zps62632667.jpg
 
Wow, that's pretty. Glad I'm a girlie. I can covet it.
 

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