What is a good cutting?

Cutting sounds like a main value of knives. 

In Japan, we say "cutting taste" when talk about knives. Cutting is taste. Taste is feelings and subjectives. We don't have method of comparison.

Advertisement say "This knife has extreme cutting ability." They can say it but they don't have evidence to prove it.

 

Tastes are bound by situations. 

Knives are small part of situations. the situations contain user, movement, object and durations, and more reasons. There are countless situations. Taste of cutting cannot be describe exactly.

 

From my experiences, user's habit is the biggest reason of the taste. Habit made our criterion for judgment.

In my home, there are only Japanese Nakiri knife. I didn't have experience to use the western style knives until I was in knife business. Now, I sharpened thousands western knives and used it to test. I still feel some uncomfortableness when I use them. Even it is expensive one. 

I also heard many opposite case. They had some strange feeling about Japanese knife even though it's very sharp. Because their standard is western style.

Another reason of cutting taste is your emotions. If you believe the knife is good, you taste it good. If you are happy to use it, taste of cutting is good.

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I often recommend my customers to use Nakiri knife. It's big different from western style knife. It would make you feel uncomfortable. I expect it. Going out of your consort zone bring you new inspiration.

 

Conclusions: Cutting is taste. There are no standard for everyone. Each person has different feeling.