Kitchen Cleaver Question

[Robson Valley]

Found a small (3" x 6") kitchen cleaver in the back of an old asian store, packed in grease (cosmoline?) and wrapped in plastic. Cleaned it up to find one blade corner bent and about 1/2" of the edge peened over. OK, easy fixes. Not even hafted straight.

Painted the bevels with black felt marker, believing that it could use a tune up for a total included bevel angle of 20-25 degrees. Did the one side at 10, inspection looked OK.
The other side is more like 40 degrees! I'll change that, maybe today. My other cleavers are approx 20-25 degrees and they work well.

Is there any real reason why such a tool might have different bevels on each side? Or just another symptom of the poor quality that I bought?

 

[Dave Budd]

it could be simply that the grinding wasn't too fussy when it was made (I say fussy, because modern westerners are fussy beyond what most of the world and history demonstrates). Or it may be that the clever is a slicing tool and so may be that the asymmetry is a design feature, you get a number of asian knife designs that are ground asymmetrically

 

[Robson Valley]

Thank you, DB. I've noticed that my serrated bread, tomato and cheese knives are ground on one side only.
Nice to learn new things for consideration. I love this place.
I have a slicing project on today's agenda = make a smallish batch of sauerkraut. Ideal opportunity for experiment to compare cleavers!