Deng Xiaowen a Cleaver from Dazu

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schanop

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James of Knives and Stones gave me this Deng Xiaowen clever to give it a try a while ago. Deng Xiaowen is a brand from Dazu, famous knife making town in Sichuan province. KKF reader may have seen Dazu reference popping up from time to time. Noodle Soup has some threads about Dazu, Cleaver, and his experience in Sichuan here, here, and here.

This sample is a handmade slicing cleaver (Cai dao) at 20cm x 11cm, 330g. It is a cladded knife in construction.
Despite this is a cai dao, slicing cleaver, its spine is very thick and flat. This is useful for tenderising meat when you flip the cleaver edge side up, and bang the spine towards cutting board. It comes with black scale covered in most area. Despite being rough almost everywhere, I only feel that only the choil needed some tweaking. Core steel is not so centre with respect to the edge. Cladding on right hand side is reaching very close to the edge. At the very tip, it is actually the cladding at the very edge. And right in the middle of the edge, there is a very noticeable crack. Being a cheap knife, don't sweat over all of these issues.

After a small tweaking: grinding and rounding choil, just roughly, and grind the right hand side a fair bit to expose the edge properly, it is a fun cleaver to use.

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Love it! Lighter than I would expect from size and spine thickness, bet it cuts great.
 
Yes, Jim, it cuts well. Being a touch shorter 20cm, and having a very light handle helps keeping the weight down. It is also very thin through out apart from the spine area.
 
stainless clad? how much are they? how is the edge retention?
 
It is carbon clad and price should be around $10 at the source in China. Edge retention is normal for a carbon knife of this price range. It is easy to sharpen, so maintaining it in good state is not a big chore.
 
for the price I paid (retail in china), I really think whoever forges these blades must be earning a super low wage. If paid better, with a bit of direction on the F&F side, things could get very interesting. Just a thought, never had a chance to go down Dazu (actually not far from where I was born, in Sichuan).
 
A new project to take on CCK, James? Came across another brand called Dengjia as well. Looks pretty similar to this Deng Xiaowen. Is it like Mr Deng vs Deng Jr?
 
A new project to take on CCK, James? Came across another brand called Dengjia as well. Looks pretty similar to this Deng Xiaowen. Is it like Mr Deng vs Deng Jr?

Great idea! Would be super cool to be able to point people your way vs Wokshop or CCK. Guessing you could get them to work a bit on fit and finish to make a bit more on their product and still leave room for a bit of profit and still an inexpensive cleaver on the market?
 
Great idea! Would be super cool to be able to point people your way vs Wokshop or CCK. Guessing you could get them to work a bit on fit and finish to make a bit more on their product and still leave room for a bit of profit and still an inexpensive cleaver on the market?

:plus1:

The cleaver looks like it has a lot of potential. I'm curious James where you think the price point would be once you intervened and cleaned the rough edges up with the knife maker.
 
for the price I paid (retail in china), I really think whoever forges these blades must be earning a super low wage. If paid better, with a bit of direction on the F&F side, things could get very interesting. Just a thought, never had a chance to go down Dazu (actually not far from where I was born, in Sichuan).

When I was in Chengdu I asked about Dazu and their cleavers, everyone acted like they had never heard of the place. Poor pronunciation? But the strange thing was every shop seemed to be pushing a certain brand of cleaver at me. I bought one just to see how good it was but I found out when I got home it was a Dazu.
 
All the knives from Dazu area are called "the deng's knife", as most of them are somewhat related under the same family name. Most general consumers these days in China are looking for stainless "good looking" knives so these basic rustic looking carbon knives are quickly diminishing, along with the technique. Sad thing to see.

I was impressed by one of these when I first used it at a friend's place in sydney. They told me it was a rusty old blade but once i sharpened it for them, they dropped their jaws. So there came the idea of exploring the possibility of getting something better out of this guys, pretty much like what I do with tanaka. That is the reason a asked chanop to give it a go.

I never thought about price point though, putting a custom handle onto it would certainly make it too expensive.
 
Dengjia in Chinese is 邓家,literally means "the deng family". :p
 
James, if you bought a batch, I'm sure people would be interested in trying. Even if it came to like $30-40 shipped to US it would be cheaper than CCK.
 
I never thought about price point though, putting a custom handle onto it would certainly make it too expensive.

Totally agree, but imo if they just didn't put that tiny metal collar, which looks as if it may feel a bit awkward whereas something that matched or covered the end of the wood it might be easy for them to change...or maybe just wood to the end? Perhaps it is not an issue as is, Chanop what do you think from using it?

I only say that about the handle because of how ergonomically the CCK sits in your hand.
 
I'd most likely try a rehandled (no need for anything fancy) one if it's possible to meet the price point of $50 or under shipped to the US. Can never try enough cleavers :)
 
Well, surprisingly the handle is actually comfortable. Usually I use pistol grip with a cleaver with index finger pointing towards the edge, or sometimes curl over the spine for more force. The handle has enough meat in the middle such that my middle finger, ring finger, and little finger curl and balance the weight of the knife easily. The small metal collar does not bother me in this case.

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Thank you sir, seeing the knife in hand helps and it looks like it just sort of disappears...guess they've been doing it long enough to know what they are doing.:nunchucks:

Looks pretty cool imo.
 
The spine looks flared. I wonder if the maker decided not to flatten it out, or if the thick spine serves a specific purpose. I would think it may affect comfort if the spine is flared too close to the handle. Though it could act as a lip to help keep food on the knife when scooping product with the blade.
 
You are correct, the spine is flared intentionally. From my understanding there are two use/benefit. One is that it adds some weight to the thin, light blade making it a better for task like meat mincing. Wider spine is also used for bashing up things, e.g. tenderising/flattening meat with spine, cracking nut shells etc.

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Nice pic, that is a drastic drop off from the spine into the blade. It does look like it would add some weight and "tenderizing" performance to the knife. Cool:cool2:
 
This post made me excited not less than three times:

First, when I read your post and saw the pictures of this beautiful cleaver.

Then, when discovering in the book arriving the very next day – the wonderful Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook by Fuchsia Dunlop –, this very cleaver pictured on one page. For me, with an untrained cleaver-eye, they look more or less identical. The flared spine is there. I cannot read the signs though; maybe someone could help with this. I think she also writes about the Dazu cleavers somewhere.

Ar60knv.jpg


And a third time, when seeing this offer: DENG Forged Kitchen Chef Knife Traditional Handmade. Could it be this? If it is, isn’t it a fairly good price?

So, are you happy still with this knife? Would you recommend to buy it? It ships for free to where I live.

All the best,
Johannes
 
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That cleaver in Fuchsia's book, I had to go and dig mine out to double check, is similar in design, but I think it is not the same brand/model I got from James. Like James said, they are related in some sense anyway.

22 is probably a good price with shipping included, but don't expect anything miracle out of the blade. It will be a serviceable knife, and probably fun to use.
 
Following the links on this series of post allowed me to discover Fuchsia has a new cook book coming out in Oct.! Being a total groupie for her, my copy when on pre-publication order with Amazon. :)
 
FYI: Land of Fish & Rice is directly translated from the word "鱼(fish) 米(rich) 之 (of) 乡 (village)" in Chinese, means "the land of plenty" ;)
 
Funny, that's her fist title in the US "Land of plenty", it is "Sichuan cookery" for UK, Australia, and probably the rest of the world.
 
That is what I was thinking too but this seems to be a cook book for a different region in China. The main fish in that part of China tends to be some type of carp. I've killed, butchered and ate it there, but it isn't that easy to come by where I live.
 
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