Big meat cleaver I just finished making

Einar

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Heres a cleaver I just finished. I wanted to make a real beast of a meat cleaver from 10 mm stock. I hated working on this thing by the end. It'll be going to a good home with a friend of mine who is quite a carnivore.


Spring steel blade, beech burl handle.

Blade length 12" (30cm)

Blade width 4" (10cm)

Total length 17.3" (44cm)

Thickness 3/8" (9.5 mm) full flat grind down to 3/16" (4.7 mm) before the cutting edge.
 
You planning to test it at a crowded area? We will watch for it at a news channel
 
You know what you are. What you're made of. War is in your blood. Don't fight it...
 
Badass. Can you talk us through the process?

Sure.

Its made from spring steel, which is very tough, which is needed since this is meant to go through bone.
I mostly use stock removal, so the shape is roughly cut with an angle grinder and refined on my belt grinder.
Once I have drilled the holes for the handle pins and the big hanger hole at the end, the real work begins of grinding the flats. Since I used such thick stock I felt I had to taper the flats down to about half thickness before making the edge, or it would be just too thick and heavy. The spine is twice as thick as most cleavers you would buy.

After grinding the flat, I normalise the blade 3 times in my forge to releave any stresses in the steel and refine the grain structure before hardening.

Hardening is done by heating up the entire blade to about 1500 F and quenching it in water. I had to do the normalising and quenching twice, becuase the blade warped in the quench, bending to one side, so I had to straighten it on my anvil and try again.

After the quench, The blade is very hard but also brittle, so it needs to be tempered. I temper for 2 hours in my kitchen oven, at about 430 F. This draws back the hardness a little and gives the steel the spring steel toughness I want.

Then, I finish the grinding process, make and attach the handle scales, sharpen the blade to hair popping sharp and then stain and oil the handle.
 
Sure.

Its made from spring steel, which is very tough, which is needed since this is meant to go through bone.
I mostly use stock removal, so the shape is roughly cut with an angle grinder and refined on my belt grinder.
Once I have drilled the holes for the handle pins and the big hanger hole at the end, the real work begins of grinding the flats. Since I used such thick stock I felt I had to taper the flats down to about half thickness before making the edge, or it would be just too thick and heavy. The spine is twice as thick as most cleavers you would buy.

After grinding the flat, I normalise the blade 3 times in my forge to releave any stresses in the steel and refine the grain structure before hardening.

Hardening is done by heating up the entire blade to about 1500 F and quenching it in water. I had to do the normalising and quenching twice, becuase the blade warped in the quench, bending to one side, so I had to straighten it on my anvil and try again.

After the quench, The blade is very hard but also brittle, so it needs to be tempered. I temper for 2 hours in my kitchen oven, at about 430 F. This draws back the hardness a little and gives the steel the spring steel toughness I want.

Then, I finish the grinding process, make and attach the handle scales, sharpen the blade to hair popping sharp and then stain and oil the handle.

Always found this fascinating. Thx for the share. Looks great. Post a vid of clever in action if possible
 
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