Some people love to use and throw away. Buy something cheap from Walmart , then toss since its really poor quality. Instead of buying a quality item for a few more $$ and having it for a lifetime. Its a huge problem that's plaguing our society, filling up landfill sites, the streets and even our oceans with garbage. I am by no means rich or even wealthy. I make it by , but I refuse to buy cheap throw away items.
I have found a lot of the older machines and tools and such were made with a quality that is only available today in the high end product lines. Back in the 30's , 40's and 50's when a family would buy a blender and never think that they would have to buy another one in a few years. Machines and tools were made with grease fittings and fully serviceable motors and parts. Obviously some of the science we have today was not put into them , but you cant argue about the quality and craftsmanship.

I remember going to a guys house who was selling 2 small drill presses. One was a 60 year old Atlas , the other a near new Mastercraft. I had zero hesitation in choosing the Atlas . This was years ago and the old Atlas is still running strong. The other one probably in the trash by now.
My grandfather was a bit of a hoarder. Growing up during the war time caused loads of people to hang onto all sorts of things. From balls of string , to packs of sugar , it was the idea of you never know when that stuff might be in short supply again. He was also a scrapper. Dealing with all sorts of weird machines from huge industrial to restaurant kitchens , he would come across it. With that same mentality he would also not use the proper tool for the job. A knife was a wire stripper , cutter and screwdriver. A hardened piece of metal was ground down to make a chisel.
My grandfathers basement was a treasure hunt for a child, well at least this child. We would go over for some dinner or family gathering and after eating the adults would talk and I would bolt to the basement to see what kind of treasures i could find. And like clockwork , 20 -30 min of me down there my grandfather would come down and start yelling at me. To say the least , I was not overly fond of him.
For my whole life I remember seeing a cleaver beat up and hanging from a nail among other junk from the rafters. It looked sad being covered in rust , its handle rotten from years of abuse and duct taped to hold its remaining bits in place. The spine of it mushroomed from being pounded by a hammer and the poor blade dented from whatever scrap was being cut by it. After his passing and we had to clean his basement I grabbed that cleaver and pulled it down. Much to my surprise this thing was heavy . It has some serious heft to it. This thing was a beast. It had to be from some butcher shop or abattoir cause it was professional quality.

Made in Sweden

After a little research , I found that it the factory that made it had long closed it's doors in Mora Sweden. Which is unfortunate since the quality of this thing was fantastic. But decades of abuse needed to be removed. It started with removing the old duct tape handle and removing all the grease and grime accumulated on it. Next was to clean up the dented edge. If you ever want to redo an old knife special care must be taken on the blade. You must sand it down slowly or you will take the temper out of it. You'll still be able to use it but it will no longer hold an edge properly and could bend easily. The blade was beat up so i needed to use my belt sander and slowly put a new edge on it. Since the handle was destroyed I needed to source out something to use. And voila , it fell into my lap.I had a bamboo cutting board that had split in half... PERFECT!!! I cut off two pieces to match and used some epoxy to attach them.

Out with the old.

So now i have a new old cleaver. It has history , character and personality coming out of everywhere. This will be a hand me down for generations. Eventually ill get some brass rivets for the holes but I am happy the way it is now. Ive yet to use it on anything heavy like cow bones , but it goes through most things laughing... Its like its telling me " is this all you got for me to do" ? . Reclaiming this piece saved me from having to spend money on a cleaver, and gives me a great story to tell. Hope you enjoyed !