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.
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.