Would you say an appropriate analogy would be driving a vacuum cleaner?

PS. Shun Classic 10″ Chef’s

Sorry it took me so long to get back to you. I’m assuming that your nice, new shun is a one of their chef knifes, either their 8″ or 10″. If not, then the shape of your blade might be the problem.

Assuming that you are using a chef’s knife, you need to make a forward and back, pushing and pulling motion while doing the up and down slicing motion.

When you lift the knife handle up, use a pulling motion to pull the blade along your guide hand to realign the blade for the next cut. Always move the knife and your guide hand, and never the food.

Finish realigning the knife to its new position by pushing the blade forward while pushing it downward. Not only will this allow you to move your knife in one fluid motion while cutting, but it will also allow you utilize the awesome edge that your new shun has.

The back and forth motion while slicing will give you much cleaner cuts by basically pulling and pushing the blade of your knife through the object that you’re cutting, instead of just smashing the blade directly through.

One more thing; to move your guide hand, use the “scooch” method. What I’ll do is I will leave my thumb on the cutting board behind my fingers and slowly draw my fingers towards my thumb. When my fingers get right up against my thumb, I will plant my fingers and then move my thumb back to a new position. In effect, this “scooching” motion will allow you to keep you guide hand moving backwards along with your knife in a nice and fluid motion.

Hope this helped.

PS: Love your site so far.

I’m having a bit of trouble with the “keep the tip on the board and rock” method. I think I’ve got the basic technique down and I’ve become pretty comfortable using the guide hand. But whenever I keep the tip on the board it basically just stays there and pivots, giving me an ever-increasing bias.

I’ve tried compensating by giving a slight lift after each chop, but then the tip is constantly being smashed directly on the cutting board, and I don’t want to ruin the edge on my nice new Shun Do you have any tips that might help me out?

Thanks for tips for holding Chef’s knife.

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