Restored cleaver.

Boy and Girls,

 

There seems to be a spate of rejuvenated tools by various enthusiast here at CN.

My sledge can see a few more years before a facelift 

and many of my planes, like this one,

are more recent than a Boeing 777X and for safety, should not be tampered with till wings start falling off or hit turbulent grain.

Consequently, this here is the morphing of my cleaver from a useless whacker to a usable hacker… but will never replace my el-cheapo, razor sharp, Chinese cleaver,

I use for cooking prep... so it was destined to be a "wall flower" guarded by my cat-o-9-tails wielding T-Rexx,

Originally posted at Lumberjocks on Sep 19, 2022 and unfortunately due to lack of photos, the prolong narrative confirms the adage of 1,000 words equate to a photo.

Missing from the LJ blog are these happy snaps…

 

Mitered the sides and cut some spline recesses on the table saw,

 

and not wanting to waste the splines, 

cut them into manageable bits,

Glued in the splines and added some contrasting trims,

before dissecting the lid/body on the tablesaw.  It was after feeding through the drum sander to tidy up the tablesaw kerfs, that my finger got stuck under the top that caused the indent that required some doctoring.

After some banter on LJ, I was coerced into deciphering the logo on the cleaver,

which followed by a Google search on Elwell, revealed the following,

 
 So, now circa 2024, another 6 years and I have an antique!

EDIT: Added a few more happy snaps.

Decked out with a brass latch,

and some Brusso (I think) hinges,

mounted on the wall using French cleats, 

 

 

Immediately following is an abridged version of my cleaver story for those that find their time precious.  Following that is the unabridged version for an audience that have time to kill and are still struggling to determine the fine line separating sanity from a basket cases.

 

 

When I moved into my current house, there was this rusty old cleaver lying on the ground in my back yard.  Every time I went past it and it was on the ground, I picked it up and imbedded it into a treated pine log at the end of this wooden pot-plant bench.

After  repeating this for about 4 years, I considered throwing it out, but before doing that I thought I would try to see if it could somehow be restored/cleaned-up.    I gave the head a thorough sanding and polishing, sharpened the edge, turned a new handle for it and used piece of polished copper pipe as a ferule.

 

I made a presentation case for it and mounted it the wall.  It turned out to be quite a reasonable restoration and has since been a good conversation piece whenever visitors notice it.

The gallery pictures are designed to show both the before and after conditions.

 

Thanks for reading.

 

 

Hello Boys and Girls,

 

This is the unabridged version for those unfortunates that cannot heed sensible advice and please don't blame the author for your shortcomings and depriving you of that precious part of your life that you squandered by reading it.

 

In this version, the heading would be replaced by,

 

 

In flashing 🎉 neon lights 🎉.

 

Most  of my prior epics have been about T&J models which somehow seems to have a limited audience of people that have a T&J model  fetish.

For a change of pace, this blog is geared towards that reputable pastime of antique dealing/refurbishing.

Actually the subject item may not be an antique…  well, not just yet,  but it is practically, almost exactly 100% guaranteed to be…, in about 100+ years… so watch this space and set reminders.

 

When I moved into my current residence, every time I went walkabouts,(which translated by Wiki: 

into the wilderness of my back yard I saw this rusty old  cleaver  lying on the ground. 

I envisage it being left behind by the previous owners or maybe even Jack the Ripper, during his last Australia visit while taking a sabbatical from his normal daily exploits, or even better still, left by those 'Ingenious Indigenous male Australian' many centuries  ago when they might have gone kangaroo hunting, jumped my fence and quickly realised it was not a boomerang when it was thrown and it wouldn't return (being typical adolescents,  did not give a rats about littering).   The cleaver had some illegible writing on it which I am guessing  could be some sort of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, hence my allusion to antiquity (hey, it certainly DID NOT have a "Made in China" sticker on its plastic parts).  Dutifully I performed  that rare activity called exercise, bent over and picked it up.  Now that my drinking hand was full and not being ambidextrous (I like all animals), I disposed of the cleaver by deftly implanting it into the top of a good-for-nothing-treated-pine-log lazing around in a corner of my jungle. 

This scenario was repeated several times a year  as well as all those times I managed to pick up the cleaver.

 

Four years had passed and the cleaver was growing a better beard than I, so I eventually thought that with all this extreme exercise my right bicep might nurture some unsightly muscle and after all, who wants a six pack on their shoulder, I decided to lay that there cleaver to rest…, at the bottom of a half a ton of garbage (anyone remember Alice's Restaurant?

…  and if you do, you are an old bugger like me).  As I went exploring for that elusive trash can, I happened to pass my workshop and had a thought… unfortunately I can't remember that thought… it could have been the making of another great story.

 

Anyway, for some reason I decided to visit  the hallowed grounds of my sanctuary and entered the portals of my workshop.

 

I suddenly noticed this prohibited, prohibition weapon dangling from my hand and not having a good-for-nothing-treated-pine-log lazing around in the corner of my workshop to vent my fury on by deftly implanting it, I decided  to polish it up to a mirror finish so I could check the status of my lipstick and makeup.  Lifting the cleaver resulted in a large hunk of the handle imbedding itself into one of my fingers and seeing as how the handle was so deteriorated that there was not enough of it to distribute splinters to my other 9 fingers (OK, 7 fingers and 2 thumbs if your keeping score), I decided to turn it a new handle on the lathe.   Having the face-lift and a new handle, I fell in love and put a copper ring on it as a sign of my everlasting commitment.

 

After the transformation and not having to sign a prenuptial, I didn't have the heart to release it to the work force, so in an attempt to impress (no idea who),  I decided to fabricate it a home of its own by the construction of a presentation box.  While making the box, I got the front caught under the drum sander  and took a great divot out of it.  As any good golfer does, I tried to replace  the divot but failed as it had been miraculously transformed into shop-vac  refuse.  Undeterred (no I didn't fall into the loo), I soldiered on and managed to perform a skin graft by the clever use of a half-moon shaped laminated inset

(why half-moon… matched the shape of the divot,  why laminated… je ne sais pas).

 

After flocking (no not a typo or a cuss word, the bottom of the box) the back board,  it got mounted (the box, not the bottom) on the wall awaiting the ides of time to metamorphosize into  the aforementioned antique heirloom.

 

It is now about 2 years old and looking quite old (greatly assisted by a 2 year deposit of dust…) and one doesn't need a crystal ball to foretell it future in 100 years.

All deposits for its purchase would, correction, will be greatly appreciated and even more greatly accepted.  Anticipated delivery 1st. June 2116.

 

Thanks for sharing my insanity.

 

If you happen to have had the misfortune to blunder across this post, the next transcript of this will be published in four  (count it 1 to 4)… (correction 1, to, three,  4)  languages, including pigeon-Netherlandisch (though that may be futile if you got this far).

 

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