The Cleaver – Part 1
Beyond just the general satisfaction of building things, the joy of blacksmithing is the process of taking something worthless and changing it into something new and beautiful.
A very close friend of mine is an outstanding chef (no, not Devin this time…we have plans in the future though!) who looks for perfection in all he does. Part of that search for perfection is the desire to take primal cuts and break them down to get exactly what he needs. To work these cuts, he needed a better cleaver; good thing for him, he knows me!
There are two ways one can approach a tool build; use a known steel to get exactly the properties you need, or you can use found material. In this case, given that the only technical requirements for a cleaver are essentially mass and strength, I thought this would be a great place to use an old truck leaf spring given to me by a coworker.
First stage is breaking the bloody things down! That was a process! Nothing a little (a lot) of messing about with an angle grinder. I had presumed that the springs weren’t under tension when they weren’t installed…I was wrong! Other than a bit of a surprise, no other ill effects; but I will keep that in mind for the future!
Manhandling the raw material around was a task to be sure! I unfortunately didn’t get any shots of the initial forging, but once the material was starting to get broken down the process started to get easier.
While possible to do this work only by hand, the progress to this point would have been nearly five times as long without this little beauty of a tool – my 16 Ton forging press from Coal Iron Works!
From bar to rough forged was four hours with this marvel of modern technology! I would suggest that this process would have been likely in the 15-20 hrs worth of hand hammering to get to the same point. While I love traditional methods, I do like to finish projects! Not to mention that my soft, office-worker body just isn’t conditioned to do that much work with a sledgehammer…
Next up, refining the shape and the joys of basic metallurgy! Until then, take care and keep making things!