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[image credit: Norman Copenhagen]
I don't know enough about cooking ergonomics to know if this is the way to go, but LucidiPevere Studio's Chop mincing knife is certainly neat to look at. A subtle bump on the knife half lets you know which side is which, though I could see myself pulling this thing open the wrong way. Can someone with experience with food prep sound off in the comments--do you want a circular blade for mincing, or is this just eye candy?
I’m a lapsed industrial designer. I was born in NYC and figured I’d die there, but a few years ago I abandoned New York to live on a farm in the countryside with my wife. We have six dogs.
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Completely circular kitchen knife, nay or yea?
The peoples of the Arctic have been using knives with similar blade shapes for centuries (even millenia). The Ulu knife is one of (if not THE) most used knives in the arctic and subarctic native cultures. Read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulu
Mike.
I am quite the novice cook but don't you want control between your thumb and forefinger?
Holding it on top like that has got to affect users' control of the blade, and bearing down on top of something like that would just be begging for a slip.
Also, all the pressure is going straight down on the blade all the time. I would think that wouldn't be good for keeping a sharp edge, at least not for long. And dull knives in a kitchen are more dangerous than not having knives at all.
It's unstable because you're putting a single point load at the top of an arc, and difficult to control because your hand is high above the cutting board surface.
A real mincing knife has two handles at the end of a shallow arc (and usually two blades). That makes it much easier to develop a fast rocking motion, and stable because the loads are balanced. Even then, it's something you very rarely see in a commercial kitchen. In the time it takes you to go find your mincing knife, I can mince the stuff with the chef's knife that was already in my hand.
This will be useless for slicing, julienning, opening packages, cutting up a chicken, or any of the other things I routinely use my 8" chef's knife for every day. It's a single-purpose gadget that isn't even better at that single purpose.
Cute design, but not really practical. I could see someone rolling over the blade and opening up their hand pretty easily.