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tostadas said:
MSC Custom Magnacut Cleaver Review
210x90mm, ~288g

Short review of this awesome cleaver Matt Sicard @MSicardCutlery made for me late last year. I've had a chance to use it now for a few weeks, so here are some of my thoughts.

Starting off with the specs. I provided Matt with my preferred parameters such as size, profile, approximate weight, and also asked for his laser grind. He nailed it to the mm on length, width, and got the flat yet continuous profile spot on. He also added some distal taper along the spine, which was nicely done. The grind is also very clean, more on this later. The handle is red oak, which I requested to be unfinished so that I could dial in and attach myself. There was actually an issue with the wood handle that came up as I was installing, and Matt went ahead and shipped me out a brand new one right away after I mentioned it to him. Super customer service!

This thing has been so much fun to use. It's a little bit more robust than the benchmark CCK 1303, with a thinner BTE grind, and an amazing steel. The high convex laser grind is well executed, maintaining its thinness way high up the blade (it's around 1.1mm @20mm behind the edge). Falls through the densest of veggies with ease. The edge retention on the Magnacut is better than anything I've used previously. It's also capable of taking just as fine of an edge as my typical carbon steels. On the stones, it's more wear resistant than simple carbon steels, but my stones are able to sharpen it just fine (shapton pros and BBW). The corrosion resistance is also nice to have for those time when I know I won't have time to keep the blade clean for extended periods of time. One of the days I was testing it, I was managing so many things at once. I left it on the kitchen counter on top of a pile of diced tomatoes for an hour before I had a chance to get back to it. It feels great to have a high end stainless option in my arsenal for situations like this.

Communicating with Matt to make this commission a reality was probably one of the easiest interactions I've had with a custom maker. It took only a few weeks from the time we finalized the design until the knife was in the mail. I think it took him less time to complete the knife than the postal service took to deliver it during the holidays. Matt's offerings are such good value for what you get. I highly recommend his work to anyone looking to get a custom laser.

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Beautiful cleaver! Is it bad form to ask for specs and price on a custom?

Thanks for the great review!
 
MSC Magnacut Cleaver @MSicardCutlery with new custom double dyed maple burl handle

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Rangen said:
Looks awesome.

I have cleavers I like a lot, but I admit I don't make myself put on gloves before I let myself handle them.
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Haha, I actually had gloves on for extra grip while installing the handle. Didn't want the blade to accidentally slip out of my hands. Also, it helps keep both the blade and handle cleaner compared to my leather work gloves.
 
I hereby welcome myself to the Cleaver section. Got my first one today in the form of a Moritaka AS Chukabocho. Thanks to @gogogo545 for a perfect transaction.


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This is how the knife arrived. Dimensions are 220x110

I sacrificed to the gods of rust and stripped the "KU" (which in this case is, I speculate, paint and not iron oxide.). I think this would have lasted much longer than typical Moritaka KU - normally it takes me only 2 minutes with sandpaper to strip it. For this, I hat to put in some real effort, took me 2 sheets and 20 minutes. If I had known that, I might have left it. But probably not.

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If you think the knife looks rustic now, wait a little while lol...


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I find it very interesting how at this point larger knives feel normal in the hand and actually not as clumsy as I would have thought. Back in the day, a 210 Gyuto was HUGE. Now it's an oversized petty.
Anyways: The profile is Moritaka-style dead flat. No rocking allowed if you want to keep your tip. (EDIT: I stand corrected - see next post :D) Profile is a tiny bit uneven, even though this may be more a trick of the light - margins are tiny when doing this kind of shot.

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In this case, there is a tiny curve to the front, so a small bit of rocking is possible before the tip digs into the board. Tip doesn't make contact with the board here. But almost :D

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See, TF? That's how you do a wonky handle. Make the grip round and no one can tell.

Nice shape overall. If I see it right, Moritaka are the only ones doing Chukabochos with a relatively low grind. Most others place it much higher. Except Takeda, of course, which is even lower.

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Handle is as bad as on the Nakiri ;), somewhat worse than on the other two Moritakas. The walnut handles are somewhat decent. But we knew this one wouldn't win any awards in the near future :D Giving it a good soak with wood oil here so it won't accept humidity all too willingly. At least the tang is stainless...


Only cut some fruits for Müsli until this point. It's a lot of fun how the knife falls though stuff, and Moritakas just respond better to my humble sharpening efforts than virtually any other blade I have.

Looking forward to the veggie delivery tomorrow to put it through its paces.

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Oh and the family is pretty much complete now. Except the petty is blue #2, which hurts the OCD parts of me a bit. But when I get an AS petty with yet another handle material, it will be perfect:cool:
 
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Yes, indeed, I do them all the time with those knives that have curved tips that will distribute the board contact over a larger area.

But with knives that have no or little curve at the front, there's only a tiny point making contact. I was under the impression that this isn't a good idea, and also found that this scratches the cutting board pretty badly...

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Am I being to careful?
 
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miggus said:
Yes, indeed, I do them all the time with those knives that have curved tips that will distribute the board contact over a larger area.

But with knives that have no or little curve at the front, there's only a tiny point making contact. I was under the impression that this isn't a good idea, and also found that this scratches the cutting board pretty badly...

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Am I being to careful?
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The common Chinese cutting board are mostly iron wood (hard) or Ginkgo (soft), the one used by Wang Gang seems to be the later. There’s also plastic ones for new health code. Anyway those thing are cheap and huge, most cooks won’t really care if it is scratched or damaged, they can just sand it down, you can see many old restaurants have literal concave board from years of sanding.

Rangen said:
Yes, agreed. Hand it over, and I will give it a good home.

In all seriousness, I don't believe "too big for the user" is a thing.
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That’s the most standard size for professional Chinese kitchen, I seems to ignore the guy you are replying to, but I can guess who that is.
 
Rangen said:
I don't believe "too big for the user" is a thing.
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That's such a cleaver people thing to say 😁

Thanks for the info @blokey. This all makes a lot of sense. It may be less ideal when people have high quality end grain boards though.

I wonder if using these drag cuts often with straight edges will lead to a rounded tip... Haven't seen indications for that yet.
 
miggus said:
That's such a cleaver people thing to say 😁

Thanks for the info @blokey. This all makes a lot of sense. It may be less ideal when people have high quality end grain boards though.

I wonder if using these drag cuts often with straight edges will lead to a rounded tip... Haven't seen indications for that yet.
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It happens, similar to a lot of restaurants chef knives have a round tip, shouldn’t impact performance too much.
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Hehe @blokey, it seems not to be a problem if the cleaver doesn't have a rounded profile for draw cuts:do them a while and the profile will become rounded on it's own.

The world of cleavers is a strange one, there's other laws than in gyutoworld, I see that now.
 
miggus said:
How come? Are those especially brittle?
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That particular cleaver is sooo thin behind the edge. Thinner than ccks. Also it’s white 2 so it’s kind of hard and I don’t think really tough at that thinness behind the edge. That being said you could probably do it I just don’t. With draw cuts I like to be able to do it quick and not worry about being very careful. There’s certain gyutos with really thin tips that I wouldn’t do draw cuts with.
 
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