Antique Rusty Cleaver - Restoration

My friend has found this rusty old cleaver on the steel waste. I really liked the unique look of it with the hook instead of a hole to hang it on the wall. As christmas holidays were just around to happen, I knew I had to pick a project that I have all the material ready in my shop, because everybody was in vacation. So i choose to restore this cleaver. The disassembling was done very quickly, so was the sandblasting. The original handle was held in place with the peened tang. I didn’t really like the shape of the handle and I also didn’t wanted to peen the handle again. Si I decided to make a more ergonomic nice looking handle. That’s why I shortened the tang around 45mm and drilled three 5mm holes in it. That went very well as the tang wasn’t hardened. Next I wanted to make it mirror polished. I startet with the belt sander to grind away all the pitting from the rust. Then it was time for hand sanding. I started with 120 grit, after all the scratches were gone from the belt sander I mo