Custom Heirloom Go Mai Veggie Cleaver

This cleaver was a custom order for a returning customer wanting to create a special gift for his father. The special part comes in to the materials used. When the customers grandfather emigrated from Vietnam, he brought a cleaver with him and that cleaver has been in the family ever since.  The current state of the cleaver was not great. The blade had multiple warps on the edge and I was told that it had been used for everything including yard work over the years. The original blade was very thin, only about 1/16" at the spine so with the waviness of the edge, there was no salvaging it. The customer wanted to see if we could use the steel in some way to make a new knife. We settled on using it in a go mai (5 layers) with a layer of nickel to go in between the old cleaver steel and the new 80crv2 cutting edge. We also wanted to stick with the original intent of the knife, which seemed to be a veggie cleaver. While it resembles a chopping cleaver, it is much thinner and is used as more