Big Daddy...et les autres Vikin

Pour changer, parlons anglais ! je vous poste un email de Jonathan, mon stagiaire américain, qui est reparti en Chine travailler (il est professeur d'anglais). comme promis, il m'a envoyé des photos de couteaux de boucher chinois, qui, comme vous le voyez, sont différents des Vikin et leurs frères vietnamiens. (sauf le dernier).

Jonathan m'a dit "maintenant que j'ai vu ce que ça fait de forger un gros couteau... je ne les verrai plus avec le même oeil!"

Hey Vinh.

How is everything going with the new shop. I looked a few of you blog posts last night and it seems like things are going well. I can't always get to your blog because blogspot is blocked in China.

I went to the market today with my camera and got a few shots of the meat cleavers that some of the people use there. check them out. they are some real big daddys.



I couldn't really see if there were any marks from a hammer on this one. It looked hand made but I couldn't really tell, it may have just been used a lot. It was an interesting shape. The first picture isn't so great to be able to tell. I was holding the knife a little bit at an angle. It had a big bulge at the tip that you can see in the second picture for a little bit of extra weight. It was a very cool knife.

both of the two knives on top here were the same. The smaller one on the bottom was just a cheap knife from a machine.



You can really see the hammer marks in this one. Its pretty impressive I think. It didn't weight much at all. you can see how thin it is in the other pictures below. I saw people using it for small things like chicken wings and legs; smaller bones. Oh, and the handle on this one and the other one above are both made out of a small piece of wood wrapped in pig skin.

This one is the big daddy! The handle is wrapped like the way yours are.

and they are very thick at the top, but then taper off to the point. I didn't get a good shot of it so Ill have to go back, but it starts of thick like this at the top and then as it goes down toward the cutting edge it tapers off pretty quickly which makes it surprisingly very light. I was really surprised when I picked it up. I thought it would be really heavy like the one that we made, but it wasn't.

again, I didn't get a good shot of it, but this is the best angle I got of the handle. Just like yours
You can really see the hammer marks in this one.

My Chinese isn't good enough yet to find out where the guy is that makes these things. Ive asked a few people and they have never seen a blacksmith here in the town. but with these knives around, one has to be somewhere.


Hope you guys are doing well. Tell Kromignon I said hello.

Jonathan