Review on Hand-Forged Full-Tang Cleaver Knife With Middle Thickness Blade For Meat And Vegetable Cutting - Ideal For Chinese Kitchen Chef, Home Kitchen Use by Sean Pierre

Against my better judgement, I bought the HS15 7" stainless cleaver. All the while I could hear "you get what you paid for" over and over in my head, but I did it anyway. This knife definitely requires some DIY attention, but if you are able and willing, you might end up with a cutter you are happy with. I was going to return it, but since I only paid around $7, I did the following instead:1) Before you open the Walmart box, close your eyes and remember how little you paid for this cleaver. When you're ready, take a deep breath and open the box. You will likely find your knife has fallen out of its retail box and is rattling around the Walmart box, because Kitory didn't take a 1" piece of clear tape and fasten the box. sigh.2) The handles on your knife are possibly loose, like mine were. Go to the garage, place one side of a rivet onto something steel (I placed a small bolt in my vise and used that to support the rear side of the rivet). Now use a hammer and a punch (or a small bolt) and strike the top side of the rivet. Check to see if this has tightened the handles, then repeat for the other 2 rivets. Don't hit it too hard else you risk cracking the wood. My rivets required a single moderate strike on each rivet. My handles are now perfectly tight, and I hope they remain so.3) You will now notice that the wooden handles are as rough as a weathered, 50 year old deck, splinters and all. They also don't align evenly with the tang of the knife, and there are gaps between the handles and tang in some spots. The gaps can't really be fixed easily without epoxy, but you can grind and smooth the handles. I used a Dremel to grind the wood even with the tang where needed. Then I sanded the handles (110 grit, then 220, and 400). If you don't have a Dremel, sandpaper will be fine, but will take longer. Now that the handle is smooth to your liking, protect it with a coat of mineral oil (reapply every couple of months). This will darken the handles, give them a nice sheen, and protect them from drying out and cracking. If the handles ever develop a rough, splintery feel over time, go back to the sand paper and do it all again.4) The top edges (spine) of the cleaver are a bit sharp if you hold it with a pinch grip, so I rounded the spine with a file and varying sandpaper grits. It is now more rounded and smooth. This isn't a have-to, but certainly helps the knife edge to not dig into your hand. before filing/sanding, put tape over the blade to prevent scratches. Or, if you are too impatient like me, just love the scratches, as if you've used this knife for years and years and its developed character marks.5) The sharpness out of the box wasn't too bad, but I would get out the sharpening stones and strop and go to work. The steel is probably fairly soft, so I don't expect it to maintain its edge very long. But in all honesty this will allow me to practice my sharpening which isn't a bad thing. Did I mention you only paid $7 for this thing?6) Random note to Kitory: If you want this knife too look really cool, emboss or print some Chinese characters into the blade like some other brands do. It's a Chinese cleaver, and should look like one! I actually engraved some lettering into my blade and really like the look.Overall, I'm happy with my purchase, but if I didn't have the skills/supplies to do the above, I would have been pretty disappointed, even at the low price. I rated it 3 stars, because it took a fair amount of work to fix. After working on it, it's probably in the to 4 or 5 star range, especially for the money paid.There you have it, hope this is helpful to someone.