# Rangen's Cleaver and Knife Gallery



## Rangen

Hi, I'm new here. You'll find my intro in the New Member Checkin subforum (http://www.kitchenknifeforums.com/showthread.php/7334-Hello-from-Sonoma-County). In that thread, Johnny.B.Good expressed the hope that I would post some pictures of my cleavers and knives. Seems reasonable. Here they are. I have a lot of stories about many of these, but let's leave most of that for further discussions. I do want to call out the knives I'm not using much, though. Maybe someone can tell me what they're good for. Keep in mind that the vast majority of my cooking is Chinese.

This is my current go-to cleaver for anything and everything, a stainless steel Sugimoto. It's just thick and heavy enough to do the cleaver-chopping thing, but thin enough to make thin slices. It takes a remarkable edge and keeps it for a remarkably long time. I love it.







This is my other Sugimoto, a larger carbon steel cleaver that is, like the other Sugimoto, perfect for almost everything. 






I think of this as my workhorse, a thinnish carbon steel cleaver I picked up on Shanghai St. in Hong Kong for $15 US. Not nearly the equal of the Sugimotos, but handy and useful, and if it does not keep an edge for long, it's nevertheless quite easy to restore one.






My previous go-to cleaver, before my incessant Googling for "Japanese-made Chinese cleaver" were rewarded with Sugimoto heaven. The Dexter. A bit on the thick side for my current tastes, but still a nice all-around cleaver.






Before the Dexter, there was...the Joyce Chen. She had a little restaurant in Cambridge, and her fame was sufficient to let her put her name on a cleaver. Not a bad cleaver, at all.






The Joyce Chen purchase worked out, so I tried another "signature" cleaver, the Judy Lew. Not much impressive steel there, but its light, thin structure has made it my wife's go-to-cleaver for random kitchen chopping. So not a total loss.







This was a custom cleaver. If pressed, I could probably sort out where I got it. It's a beauty, thin and long and light. The physics make it a bit fatiguing, and its thinness makes it not the sort of thing I want to be whacking into my chopping board at high speed, but I pull it out from time to time to make really thin cuts, or to cut really long things, and am delighted.






Here's the first tragedy of the collection, a cleaver I find stunningly beautiful, but useless. It's too curved on the bottom to work well with my style of working, and the smooth handle does not seat firmly in my hand, tending to twist. Can't use it. Sure is pretty, though.






I find cleavers preferable for almost everything. But sometimes, I need other knives. The most interesting case of that is when I need super-thin slices, especially from something that doesn't want to cooperate, like a room-temperature pork loin. That's when I want the thinnest knife I can come up with. Global's helpful here:






But so are the random Japanese sources I got these from.






The other big thing is boning. From the top:

- A basic Global boning knife. Very useful
- A French Ebay purchase, with some rust. Great knife. It's super-flexible, and I can get more fillet off of the bones of a fish than I can with anything else I've got. 
- Another EBay purchase of unknown origins. It needed a lot of cleanup. But the thing is super-sharp, and I find it really useful for finding those places where the ligaments fall away, and the bones separate
- A Japanese "boning" knife, or so the site said. Seems like a great knife, but darned if I can find a use for it.






Like anyone else, I need to slice ham:






or cheese and bread:






But sometimes things get a little weird, and I find a need for a "bird" knife (to remove the bones from a chicken or duck the hard way, from the inside), or a total hacking knife, to do random tasks I don't want to waste my other knives on:






Then, finally, there is the art piece, a David Boye which I bought many years ago, not as art, but to use. Turns out I can't think of a darned thing I want to do with a chef's knife, that doesn't seem more sensible to do with a cleaver, or one of my others. The thing is beautiful, and different (that greasy texture of the dendritic steel is unique), and holds an edge like you wouldn't believe, but it's not for me, and I'm not really a collector type so I will probably sell it at some point. Have you seen what these things are selling for these days?






That's the collection. Hope you enjoyed.


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## Pensacola Tiger

Nice collection - thanks for sharing with us.

Rick


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## ecchef

Your custom cleaver (#7) is a Takeda in Aogami Super steel. The star of the show in my opinion. 
I'm a bit distressed to see all that rust though.


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## JKerr

Good to see another Sugimoto fan with the odd vintage piece thrown in. Out of interest, is there a slight overgrind in your Sugimoto #6 just above the 5 1/2 inch mark on the ruler or is just my eyes? Curious as I think mine has a tiny one in more or less the same spot.

Cheers,
Josh


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## Rangen

ecchef said:


> Your custom cleaver (#7) is a Takeda in Aogami Super steel. The star of the show in my opinion.
> I'm a bit distressed to see all that rust though.



Yes, it's more a working collection than a pretty collection. But also, I haven't had much luck with my occasional forays into rust removal projects. Something to learn more about here, I guess. I remember a particularly disastrous episode involving a wine cork and something in the Comet family, but at least I didn't cut myself and end up in the hospital doing that, like a guy I knew once. At least if I cut myself, I was creating food at the time.

I figure your rust observation is about the whole collection, not the custom cleaver. All I see on that one is a very vague discoloration toward the front.

Thanks for the ID on the custom cleaver. I think I know what you mean by "star of the show," but I tend to think of these things by how useful they are to me, so the Sugimotos get my top billing.


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## Rangen

JKerr said:


> Good to see another Sugimoto fan with the odd vintage piece thrown in. Out of interest, is there a slight overgrind in your Sugimoto #6 just above the 5 1/2 inch mark on the ruler or is just my eyes? Curious as I think mine has a tiny one in more or less the same spot.
> 
> Cheers,
> Josh



I think you've blown past my knowledge a bit -- I'll make some guesses: you're talking about the stainless steel cleaver, and you're talking about that oddly uneven wave of the flat grey part, relative to the shiny part toward the blade, which centers around 5 1/2", right? If so, yes, it's real, not a photographic artifact. It's more even on the other side, but there's a different anomaly on that side, toward the front:


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## brainsausage

Nice collection. Need to start oiling you blades though. Moisture is the devil in terms of carbon. Ive made the mistake of leaving a couple of my knives fallow for a week or two without oiling, only to find a little rust forming. Always makes me a little panicky. I'm a big chinese cleaver fan as well by the way. Fun and functional workhorses. Welcome to the Forum


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## JKerr

Nah, actually meant the carbon sugimoto. Just at that point it looks like the bevel gets a tiny bit smaller, maybe it's just the light or the patina though.

Cheers,
Josh


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## sw2geeks

Welcome, nice to see another cleaver guy. :biggrin:

Even though your Takeda cleaver is very thin it is super strong. No need to baby it when using it.


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## Johnny.B.Good

Quite an interesting collection Rangen, thank you for sharing it with us.


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## Eamon Burke

Welcome! Take some Barkeeper's Friend to every single thing in that collection, and sharpen that Boye!

I do like them though, looks like a fun expense of knives.


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## Rangen

BurkeCutlery said:


> Welcome! Take some Barkeeper's Friend to every single thing in that collection, and sharpen that Boye!
> 
> I do like them though, looks like a fun expense of knives.



The Boye is sharp. I don't know why it looks weirdly ragged at the edge in the picture. Some trick of reflection, I suppose. I'll try to get a more representative picture at some point.

BKF, eh? Sure, I'll try it.


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## wenus2

Welcome, and thanks for adding to the gallery.
Yeah, no question that Takeda is the prize among this crowd. People do love their Sugi's though, no shame in that.

The Mizuno you have, that is of unknown use, is called a honesuki. It's a poultry boning knife mostly, but a good utility as well. I use mine mainly on breaking down chicken and duck. 

Yes, BKF is like magic, but it's a mild acid. A suggestion i found helpful is to use baking soda after the BKF to neutralize the acid. I started doing this 'cause I had one knife that would clean up great and then start rusting almost instantly after I stopped scrubbing, the baking soda solved this.


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## malacara

Nice cleaver collection!! thanks for sharing it with us.

Welcome BTW (and glad to see another cleaver fan)

Regards


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