this meat cleaver is not one that i made. infact i dont know who made it. but thats not important, what is important is that it was my grandmothers meat cleaver that she used to clean thousands and thousands of fish with.  my grandfather was a commercial fisherman here in kansas most of his life running nets for every type of fish that lives in the kasas river. but once the fish were caught my grandmother alone cleaned every single fish caught.  i have a few other knives that were hers to and they are worn down to a knub.  she was lighting fast with a knife and took mearly seconds to clean a whole fish.  but where the meat cleaver comes in is that it was hers and she used it to chop heads and tails off.  it was passed along to an uncle when she passed away and he put it to use cleaning fish as well just not as many, lol.  and a year or so ago he handed it down to me.  i was very pleased to recieve it.  but with the blade pretty rusty and the wood all but gone i figured it needed cleaned up before i could put it back in play.  so i did alot of steel wool rubbing and some light sanding but i didnt wanna take away the wear marks that are a reminder of my grandmother.  after that i decided to make some new scales but of what? well i happen to have some osage arond and figured thats as good as it gets.  so i made the scales and opted not to epoxy but to keep it period correct and put the osage on with simple copper rivots.  when i was done i couldnt be happier with my work and to have put a tool 3 generations old back to use.  

Wow, a great functional piece of family history to use and admire!  It looks great, nice work!

Steve
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Potomac Forge

Great story.
Nice job

CTT

Love the history and the cleaver!

Cool stuff JD, don't get no better than that!

That's fantastic.  Thanks for sharing the story and the pics.      

Rusty

Great job and thanks for sharing the family history.

Jeremy

i just used the cleaver for the first time since the remodel and it handles great and the steel must be good cuz even after butchering 7 rabbits its still sharp enough to shave the hair on your arm.  thanks for all the kind words.