So what you are deciding between with the 1302 and 1303 is two small slicers. You are not contemplating “two different schools of thought… smaller, lighter to bigger, heavier” You are comparing an apple to a slightly bigger apple. If you want to make it somewhat apples an oranges and stay within the cck slicers, you want to look at either the 13 series for small slicer or 11 series for large slicer.
The 1302 and 1303 are going to be lighter and shorter. They are probably in the 8ish-10ish ounce range, 90ish mm tall probably, while my 1103 the smallest of the large slicers is 14ish ounces and around 110 mm tall. These two series will handle much differently while the differences within the series will be much less, although the length does make a difference, especially comparing 1301 to 1303.
Another thing is I believe you just got a small wok shop cleaver. So if that’s very similiar dimensions to the 13 series CCK, most likely( I admit I’m presuming) you will find yourself preferring the cck and your wok shop one will quickly be collecting dust. If you were to get a 11 series you could try two different sizes and styles and still use your wok shop one, before moving on. Of course if you are rather trying to upgrade from the wok shop and stay similiar size than perhaps the 13 series is your huckleberry. I am presuming that the wok shop is smaller, but I may be mistaken.
Also you don’t really need to subscribe to one of these “schools of thought.” You can possibly over complicate it. They are still tools. Just like it’s nice to have different size gyutos for different tasks. It can be nice to have different size cleavers for different duties. What I mean is I grab a small or a large cleaver based upon what I’m doing. Not that I’m changing back and forth for every ingredient. But for example if I was doing a lot of big bulk prep with some larger portions I would probably grab a large cleaver. Or maybe if I was doing a lot of small items like a list of mushrooms, brussel sprouts, shallots I’d probably grab a small cleaver.
It’s just like with gyutos. We could pretty much do just about everything with one gyuto, but people that are here are generally not doing that. They get different sizes, carbon, stainless etc. Its the same with cleavers. If you start using them pretty much exclusively “most” people that are here are going to have more than one to fit different occasions and more than likely to satisfy their love of knives.
