An antique dealer brought me this knife. It was form an old house in Brewster. We have no idea its function. It is forged with a stick tang peened over a washer at the end of the handle. It is a bit longer than an 8 ” chef knife. The blade has a thick tip and the top and bottom are tapered thin. Also the thickness of the tip carries down through the middle of the blade. despite the cleaver like hole the knife is to thin to be a traditional cleaver. At some point the top spine was hammered through stuff and the blade was poorly sharpened and maybe the hammering cause a slight warp in the middle of the blade around the uneven spot in the middle of the blade edge. The customer wanted the knife made serviceable for the kitchen. I ground off the sharp jagged and broken bit off the top where it had been hammered and straightened out the bottom edge. I gave it a good buffing with a soft fiber wheel to get rid of all the lose rust and then worked the surface with WD40 and a brass brush to loosen and remove rust from down in the pitting. I then gave it a good buffing with a cloth wheel. I then sharpened it and left the handle soaking in bees wax and mineral oil all day and the old dry walnut drank it in turning a deep almost black rather than a light dry brown. It is a cool conversation piece that now is a cool Asian style cleaver. Still not sure its original use.
That looks more like an old version of something like a “hori hori ” rather than a kitchen knife. I could be wrong but that’s what came to mind when I saw it.