Week 7 Prep: Cuts, under supervision

This week's lecture describes the knife; this session is where the grip and the standard cuts are practised at the bench and checked against the deck's own figures for length, weight, hardness and edge angle.

5 April 2027

The lecture describes a knife. This session is where one is used. Nothing here is cooked — a knife’s job this week is to turn a whole piece of material into pieces of a stated size and shape, for storage or for a later step, and the session checks that the piece can do that job, not what happens to the pieces afterwards.

Before the session#

Bring a knife if you have one you already trust; a bench set is available for anyone who does not. Either way, weigh it in your hand before you start. A maker’s own specification sheet for a standard 200 mm chef’s knife lists a weight of 265 g and a factory edge of roughly 14 degrees; a knife that feels much lighter or much heavier than that changes where its balance point sits, and therefore how it should be held.

In the session#

Weigh-in. Compare the bench knife’s blade length, weight and edge against the reference figures from the deck. Western-style kitchen knives are typically sharpened around 20–22 degrees per side and run 52–58 on the Rockwell hardness scale; harder blades hold an edge longer but chip more readily if steeled carelessly. None of this is trivia — a knife outside these ranges behaves differently at the bench, and the grip correction that follows depends on knowing which way it differs.

Grip. Pinch grip on the knife hand — thumb and the first knuckle of the index finger gripping the blade itself just above the handle, the remaining fingers wrapped around the handle — and claw grip on the guiding hand, knuckles forward, fingertips tucked under and away from the blade’s path. Both are corrected individually before anyone is allowed to work at speed.

The cuts. The shapes named in the deck, produced at the bench rather than watched on a slide: uniform sticks, then a uniform dice from those sticks, then a fine ribbon cut on a leafy vegetable. Consistency of size is what is checked, not speed — an uneven cut this week is an uneven result in week 11, when the same material meets heat for the first time.

Maintenance. A honing rod is on every bench. Hone before you start: honing realigns an edge that has rolled slightly out of true without removing any metal, so it can be done every time a knife is picked up. Sharpening removes metal to rebuild an edge that honing can no longer restore, and runs on a slower cycle — roughly monthly under heavy, professional-style use, a few times a year under home-style use. This week’s bench knives are checked and, if due, sharpened by the demonstrator; students are not issued a stone until that distinction is second nature.

Why there is no calculator this week#

This week’s exercise is at the bench, not on screen: the reference figures for edge angle and hardness are given directly above rather than through a calculator, because what is being checked is a knife in a student’s hand against those figures, not a value computed from a chosen ingredient.

Afterwards#

Feedback is on grip and on the consistency of the cut pieces, not on outcome — there is no outcome yet. What a marker checks going forward is whether an uneven or unsafe cut from this week shows up again in week 11’s comparison; if it does, that is data about preparation, which is the point of this course.