[Old timers here will know what I mean when I say: Let's hope this doesn't turn into another 'Shigefusa-Santoku-Gate'! 
]
---
I recently bought this knife from @Chasingsharpness, who'd had the noble ambition of trying to sand out the horrid new etched logo that CCK now put on their knives. Equally understandable was that he gave up after a while, because hand sanding steel if a f-ing ballache. So the knife was sold as something of a 'project', and as well as the aesthetics he noted that it could also have done with a little thinning bte (more on which later). And I do like a project.
Even though I own quite a lot of caidao already this is the first time I've had a CCK 1303, because it's too small. The 1303 isn't tall enough to be a proper caidao; it's little more than a glorified nakiri, and what do we do to nakiri...? We K-Tip them. I like K-Tips because I think they look badass. I perhaps wouldn't put one on a classic 210 or 240 gyuto, but in my book almost anything else will be improved by a reverse tanto. In fact one of my very favourite knives is the Shibata Tinker Tank, and the 1303 happens to be an almost perfect size to do something like this with:
The TT is a few mms taller than the CCK, but otherwise I should be able to match the profile fairly exactly. The knives are obviously going to be quite different; the TT is far thicker at the spine, and the CCK has a quite pronounced, rather kooky S-grind thing going on, which @stringer correctly pointed out was rather like the 'belly' or 'horizontal stabilizer’ you see on some straight razors, and which caused me some problems with the thinning later on.
First though we're gonna use an angle grinder to lop off the end of the knife for the k-tip, then use belts to put the in the curve up to the tip. On a caidao this thin the spine and choil are also fairly sharp initially, so I use another machine to round them out significantly:
As I said before; the knife could've done with a little thinning bte, and the fact that I've ground a slight curve up to the tip obviously means the edge isn’t apexed any more anyway. So I need to re-grind the bevels a bit. What I hadn't really clocked was that the belly part of the s-grind was doing the same thing as it does on a razor - it was stabilizing it, giving otherwise very thin metal some rigidity. And combined with the upsweep to the tip it meant that initially I over-thinned the end of the knife. Without that bit of slightly thicker steel the tip of the knife was absurdly flexy, as flexy as the flexiest of flexy filleting knives. And I had to take it back. I took about 10mm off the length, 5mm off the height, and didn't put the upsweep to the tip back in cos that's what was taking it up past the stabilized bit. And then obviously re-ground the bevels bte.
Here's a picture of the final choil geometry. It's still hyper thin, and you can see what I mean about the s-grind stabilizing belly type thing:
In terms of outright performance it cuts like nothing you know. If you're after ginger and garlic sliced thinner than tissue paper, then I strongly recommend taking an already thin piandao and thinning it further, as far as the steel will take:
'But how is the food release?!' I hear you cry...
I dunno. How's the boot space in your Ferrari? As with anything in life - certain compromises must be made.
After my test drive above I then etched in strong acid, to make it look even more badass. The vid below is immediately after the nitric dunk, and it's pretty damn funky I think. Like a gothic sunset. Note also that this is obviously a monosteel knife, so this is what differential hardening looks like. The darker steel at the edge is harder than the steel at the spine. I assume this is done by only quenching the lower part during HT(?), but someone else here might know better what's going on:
Finally a quick note on the handle, I've made fancy new handles for the large majority of caidao that I've owned, but I'm not going to here for a couple of reasons. The 'standard' Chinese cleaver handles are really good in terms of comfort and feel, but the light coloured wood doesn't look all that great imo. In the past @Chasingsharpness had done a coffee etch on this knife, he wasn't such a fan of the etch on the metal but during it had spilled some of the coffee on the handle, and that did look good, so he did a full coffee stain on the rest of it. I've burnt and ebonized caidao handles before to darken them, but I think this coffee stain is better than either of those, I really like it.
The other reason I'm not going to change the handle is because of balance. I've taken a Chinese cleaver and made it into something that is definitely not a Chinese cleaver. The new shape makes the knife particularly good for fine tip work, and for that I think this neutral balance is perfect:
Something I would always do when keeping the handle on this kind of knife is seal the tang at the ferrule. Caidao handles are held in place by having the tail of the tang peened round the end of the handle, the metal collar / ferrule is hollow, and nothing is glued in place. If you don't seal this part then water will get in and the tang will rust and corrode over time, a bit of superglue or epoxy or silicone is all you need:
---
I'm really happy with how it's come out tbh. But is the k-tip a functional improvement compared to if you just took a regular shape CCK or Leung Tim and thinned it a little...? I'm not 100% convinced.
If you do a lot of delicate tip work then it probably is better, if you don't then I reckon the rectangle and the forward weighting are better. It's pretty marginal though; this is an excellent knife whatever way you spin it, and also I think undeniably fairly cool, and fairly different.
]---
I recently bought this knife from @Chasingsharpness, who'd had the noble ambition of trying to sand out the horrid new etched logo that CCK now put on their knives. Equally understandable was that he gave up after a while, because hand sanding steel if a f-ing ballache. So the knife was sold as something of a 'project', and as well as the aesthetics he noted that it could also have done with a little thinning bte (more on which later). And I do like a project.
Even though I own quite a lot of caidao already this is the first time I've had a CCK 1303, because it's too small. The 1303 isn't tall enough to be a proper caidao; it's little more than a glorified nakiri, and what do we do to nakiri...? We K-Tip them. I like K-Tips because I think they look badass. I perhaps wouldn't put one on a classic 210 or 240 gyuto, but in my book almost anything else will be improved by a reverse tanto. In fact one of my very favourite knives is the Shibata Tinker Tank, and the 1303 happens to be an almost perfect size to do something like this with:
The TT is a few mms taller than the CCK, but otherwise I should be able to match the profile fairly exactly. The knives are obviously going to be quite different; the TT is far thicker at the spine, and the CCK has a quite pronounced, rather kooky S-grind thing going on, which @stringer correctly pointed out was rather like the 'belly' or 'horizontal stabilizer’ you see on some straight razors, and which caused me some problems with the thinning later on.
First though we're gonna use an angle grinder to lop off the end of the knife for the k-tip, then use belts to put the in the curve up to the tip. On a caidao this thin the spine and choil are also fairly sharp initially, so I use another machine to round them out significantly:
As I said before; the knife could've done with a little thinning bte, and the fact that I've ground a slight curve up to the tip obviously means the edge isn’t apexed any more anyway. So I need to re-grind the bevels a bit. What I hadn't really clocked was that the belly part of the s-grind was doing the same thing as it does on a razor - it was stabilizing it, giving otherwise very thin metal some rigidity. And combined with the upsweep to the tip it meant that initially I over-thinned the end of the knife. Without that bit of slightly thicker steel the tip of the knife was absurdly flexy, as flexy as the flexiest of flexy filleting knives. And I had to take it back. I took about 10mm off the length, 5mm off the height, and didn't put the upsweep to the tip back in cos that's what was taking it up past the stabilized bit. And then obviously re-ground the bevels bte.
Here's a picture of the final choil geometry. It's still hyper thin, and you can see what I mean about the s-grind stabilizing belly type thing:
In terms of outright performance it cuts like nothing you know. If you're after ginger and garlic sliced thinner than tissue paper, then I strongly recommend taking an already thin piandao and thinning it further, as far as the steel will take:
'But how is the food release?!' I hear you cry...
I dunno. How's the boot space in your Ferrari? As with anything in life - certain compromises must be made.
After my test drive above I then etched in strong acid, to make it look even more badass. The vid below is immediately after the nitric dunk, and it's pretty damn funky I think. Like a gothic sunset. Note also that this is obviously a monosteel knife, so this is what differential hardening looks like. The darker steel at the edge is harder than the steel at the spine. I assume this is done by only quenching the lower part during HT(?), but someone else here might know better what's going on:
Finally a quick note on the handle, I've made fancy new handles for the large majority of caidao that I've owned, but I'm not going to here for a couple of reasons. The 'standard' Chinese cleaver handles are really good in terms of comfort and feel, but the light coloured wood doesn't look all that great imo. In the past @Chasingsharpness had done a coffee etch on this knife, he wasn't such a fan of the etch on the metal but during it had spilled some of the coffee on the handle, and that did look good, so he did a full coffee stain on the rest of it. I've burnt and ebonized caidao handles before to darken them, but I think this coffee stain is better than either of those, I really like it.
The other reason I'm not going to change the handle is because of balance. I've taken a Chinese cleaver and made it into something that is definitely not a Chinese cleaver. The new shape makes the knife particularly good for fine tip work, and for that I think this neutral balance is perfect:
Something I would always do when keeping the handle on this kind of knife is seal the tang at the ferrule. Caidao handles are held in place by having the tail of the tang peened round the end of the handle, the metal collar / ferrule is hollow, and nothing is glued in place. If you don't seal this part then water will get in and the tang will rust and corrode over time, a bit of superglue or epoxy or silicone is all you need:
---
I'm really happy with how it's come out tbh. But is the k-tip a functional improvement compared to if you just took a regular shape CCK or Leung Tim and thinned it a little...? I'm not 100% convinced.
If you do a lot of delicate tip work then it probably is better, if you don't then I reckon the rectangle and the forward weighting are better. It's pretty marginal though; this is an excellent knife whatever way you spin it, and also I think undeniably fairly cool, and fairly different.
Last edited:
