How to protect a Chinese Cleaver at work?

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Eamon Burke

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I recently got a CCK to try out at work, and its been a great help. I've never owned a proper Chinese cleaver, and it fits my cutting style and my needs like a glove.

But I have been wondering how to keep it protected carrying it to and from work and when I'm not using it. A blade guard is what I'm doing now, but it tends to fall off in my bag(I don't carry enough knives to justify a separate roll, really). I love sayas for other knives, but I'm not about to commission a gigantic wooden sheath for a $40 knife.

How do you guys protect your cleavers at work?
 
I just have a felt lined sheath attached with some elastics. Although I am thinking of making a balsa saya for mine.
 
I've done "paper sayas" before, wrapping several layers of printer paper around the top, several layers around the bottom and taping together. It can actually look decent, though very economical. Just be careful of it sliding off along the length of the knife, but it wasn't an issue for me when I carried my cleaver(s) "tip"-down in my backpack.

I currently use a blade guard on each of my cleavers, then have each in an individual silk knife bag. No worries about slippage at all. You could just as easily wrap the knife + guard combo in a large enough cotton or silk fabric. Bind with an elastic or a cord of some kind. It all depends on how nice things need to look!

If you just need to protect the blade, the "paper sayas" worked great for me for a long time.
 
I recently got a CCK to try out at work, and its been a great help. I've never owned a proper Chinese cleaver, and it fits my cutting style and my needs like a glove.

But I have been wondering how to keep it protected carrying it to and from work and when I'm not using it. A blade guard is what I'm doing now, but it tends to fall off in my bag(I don't carry enough knives to justify a separate roll, really). I love sayas for other knives, but I'm not about to commission a gigantic wooden sheath for a $40 knife.

How do you guys protect your cleavers at work?

Talk to Colin he can probably make you a leather knife sheath for it. He does good work, rustic and one of a kind.
 
Steve @ leather-worker.com can make you a leather sheath.
 
From what I've seen of Chinese/Asian restaurant kitchens, CCKs (along with Leung Tims and Kau Kongs and the rest) live in a plastic bucket on the floor - all crammed in together. lol
 
I see them come in most often in cardboard sayas, second most often are blade guards and rubber bands, then newspaper/magazine sayas.
 
I've been using a Messermeister edge guard for my Dexter Chinese Cleaver for years. I actually only like using the slicer model for my knives - the chef's model sucks because they tend to open up after a while.
 
Hmmmmmmm I might make a sheath from cheap hobby store wood...

I just don't want to commission a custom leather/wood sheath for a $40 knife, you know?
 
On some knives I make a scabbard/sheath out of thin cardboard and tape (yeah duct tape), like from a cereal box. Then I slip an edge guard over that to keep it tight on the knife. For my carbon knife, I coat it with mineral oil after I clean it and then slide it freshly oiled into my cardboard sheath. The paper soaks the oil up and over time kind of makes the sheath self-oiling every time I slide the knife in.

-AJ
 
I make them my self out of leather but I have made a few out of wood as well, just can't find any picks of the wood ones. But the easiest way to make one out of wood is to just have some one with a table saw cut almost all the way threw a piece of 1x? ( for. Big CCK I'd say 1x6 or 1x8) the saw blade is 1/8th" thick so what your are left with is kind of like a "U" shape. You can fill in the top with a 1/8" wood shim, glue it sand it, stain it... As crazy as you want. The first one I made I did with a hand saw and a price of cedar wood, took maybe 1/2 hour.


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That was exactly what I had in mind. I can probably buy wood thin enough at the hobby store, and circumvent finding a person with a decent scroll/band saw.

Killer sheaths, BTW. Never seen the Takeda one.
 
That was exactly what I had in mind. I can probably buy wood thin enough at the hobby store, and circumvent finding a person with a decent scroll/band saw.

Killer sheaths, BTW. Never seen the Takeda one.
That was one of my 1st sheaths, Carter was one of my last.

If you kept the paper that the cleaver came wraped in you could wrap and glue it to the out side of the hobby wood, look cool.
Kind of like i did on this saya i made for the tuna saw Heiji made me. I made the saya out of cedar saya like I was talking about before and I thought all the Japanese stamps that Heiji used to mail it to me looked cool so I lacquer them to the saya.
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If you use soft wood like pine and cedar you won't need a high end chisel to make a saya.Also the cheap wood will make the failures easy to swallow.
 
You could rub some green chrome Into the balsa wood and strop on the saya
 
Hahaha that's hilarious. Reminds me of those Pampered Chef sheaths with the pull through rods in the mouth.
 
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