For a Chinese cleaver maker, thickness or grinding method is not a problem but a choice. It's quite normal to produce small batches of unusual blades sometimes. Chinese cleavers may all look rectangular, but the details can vary greatly. To meet the needs of different customers, it’s normal to produce small batches of uncommon knives. Since these are small batches, it's also normal to find limited information available.
This is even more common for hand forgers. Recently, I made three knives: one customer needed a thickness from 3mm to 1.5mm to 0.9mm, another needed from 3mm to 2mm, and one didn't require any tapering. The edge grinding methods were entirely different for each, as were the surface treatments and handles. It's like a buffet.
In China, there are many different schools of thought on how chefs use their knives. This is a market of 1.4 billion people, and the needs of different schools vary greatly. The most extreme knife I've made had an 8mm thick spine, but the cross-section was T-shaped, narrowing quickly, with the lower half designed as a very thin slicing knife. I remember this was a custom order for a chef from the Sichuan school. This type of knife is rare in other schools. Actually, CCK knives are representative of the Hong Kong style in Cantonese cuisine.
The popularity of CCK in Western markets is largely because Hong Kong's culinary industry has long represented Chinese cuisine in the West. As a knife supplier from Hong Kong, CCK knives followed Hong Kong chefs around the world. In reality, Chinese culinary schools are very diverse, with many interesting knife types to explore. It's quite fascinating.
View attachment 331109View attachment 331110
