Antique Two Handed Cleaver - Restoration

In this video I’m restoring a very big cleaver. These cleavers are also called „splitter“. They were used by butchers before they had electric saws to help their work. There are a few characteristics that make it very obvious that this is a cleaver: the very thick blade and the big angle on the cutting edge, the hole in the front to hang it on the wall, the very long handle to hold it with two hands. I’ve found this cleaver actually a long time ago and I was very impressed by its size. Now I thought it’s the time to restore it. This project was pretty straight forward. After a quick disassembly I gave the blade a nice sandblasting with glass beads to remove all the rust. With the help of a hand held belt sander I removed all the pitting of the blade. On the tang I just sanded it clean and didn’t went that far as it will be covered by the handle afterwards. I didn’t want to remove anymore material to remove all the pitting, that would just weaken the tang. Once I hade it all clean I switched to hand sanding with finer grits, all the way up to 600 wet. I decided to go with a satin finish on the blade. There it is very important that all sanding marks point in the same direction to get a uniform look. For the handle I choose pear wood. I really like the color of it, it’s also quite hard and nice to work with. I first drilled all counterbored holes before I started to rough shape it with a saw and rasps. To fix the handle on the tang I used screwable rivets, also know as „Chicago rivets“. I machines these out of brass to get a nice contrast with the pear later. I applied Loctite on the threads of the rivets to make sure they will never ever come loose again. After tightening them against eachother I filed their heads flush with the handle, leaving just a round dot of brass in the wood. Then it was just time to fine sand the complete handle up to 600 grit and oil it with linseed oil. Before applying the oil I sprayed some water onto the wood to raise the grain, which I then sanded down again with 600 grit to achieve the smoothest possible finish. Now there was just the sharpening of the blade missing. I did that on my friends belt sander with a 400 grit belt running against the cutting edge. It ended up being super sharp so it even cuts tomatoes very nice and clean. Eventhough this was a rather simple project compared to my other ones, I really enjoyed restoring it. I’m very happy how this cleaver has turned out in the end. I’m glad I went with the satin finish, it really has a very classy look together with the pear handles and the brass rivets. Huge thank you to all of my Patreon supporters and especially to: Adel AlSaffar Alex McGeorge Alfonso Baz Alistair Moor Amar.k Arron Metcalf Ben Sigelman Bendurion Brenna Redpath Chris walter Dane Prince David Barker Edward Conway Embiss Haitham Al Zir John Shebanow Joseph Kamps Josh Ledford Josh Wasserman Joshua Bentley Joshua Scher Kar Marsten Kerem Yollu Lambda GPU Workstations LordPi Mellissa Marcus Monte Gibbs Nathaniel Jack NoLoneSurvivor Pat Thrasher Peter Riddett potokslow Robert Brindley SophieHDLM Steve Bothe StevenVR Tyler Carruth VaushVidya Vickie Bligh Vince Valenti Will Black Xavier Carbel Yale Baker Yuri Zapuchlak Adam Holtzclaw AK Alex Findlay Alipasha Sadri Andrew Phillips Arni Bjorgvinsson Benjamin Gouveia Bonnie Williamson Brett Pitts Brian Hoerl Chad Bryant Charles Copenhaver Crystal Cash Damien Fuller-Sutherland Daniel Trejo Daniel Varga Dave Hardware David P Hruska David Powell Evan Serrano Grant Daniel Haley McFadden Hard_Boiled Jack Curry jake meckley Jason Koi Jeff Smith Jeremy Cole Johan Vergeer Joël Franusic Justin Blackwood Ken Rosso Kevin Robinson Kurt Gazow L Rlta Lina Machina Marc Cerisier Marc Staedelin Mary Casella Mellissa McConnell Micheal Bier Michael Lamp Micheal Stone Mossy_Forrest Nik Peter Cyprian Peter Read Rebecca Miller Regis Vincent Rob Robert Galyen Sarah Langlais Scott Marshall Stefan Kronander Steven Michalcewicz Svenja Kuckla Thanny Tim Holt Tom Wallace Trevor Kam Tucker Ifft Victoria Emmenegger William My camera: Panasonic HC-VX11 This is an ASMR style video. Especially made to have the best sound quality, so you can enjoy all the authentic sounds created in the workshop in ASMR style. If you have any questions about the process, machines i’m using or other stuff, just ask me in the comments. I read them all and i try to reply as soon as possible. Sorry for my bad english, it’s not my language. I try my best to improve my technical english. Subscribe for more of my content. I’m uploading videos about mechanical stuff, as new creations and buildings and also restorations. Thank you for watching :-) „I make a new one“ T-Shirts: My Main Channel: My Second Channel: My Patreon Page: