The other day I was cutting some slices from a block of cheese, as I have many times before, and once again painfully noticed the quite large amount of force necessary to push the knife through the cheese.

To solve this, I propose a knife with a mechanism built into the handle to apply repeated blows through the blade, in the cutting direction. (To achieve this from the handle, the blows must have a rotational component, I think.) You would just press down lightly, and the mechanism would either use an electric motor to hammer the knife through the thing to be cut, or would operate like an automatic center punch (but repeating) to harvest energy from your continuous light pushing and concentrate it into short sharp blows.

This would be useful for cutting many things other than cheese. With a sufficiently strong and hard blade (not necessarily a contradiction—see composite metal swords), it should be possible to cut metals, which would be useful for harvesting components from appliances found dumpster diving, for example.

An advanced version could have a sagitally split blade similar to that of an electric carving knife. One side of the blade would hammer down at a time, cutting a little further, while the other would remain in place, stuck to one side of the kerf either through friction or using barbs, as an anchor for the blow and/or energy harvesting.
-- notexactly, Sep 27 2016

(?) Existing chisels for jackhammers http://tradelinetoo...-chisels-and-spades
You do realize that the thinner the blade, the less force you can apply before its shape warps? [Vernon, Sep 28 2016]

Bosch EasyCut 12 NanoBlade chainsaw https://www.bosch-d...2-06033c9000-v40066
A tiny chainsaw that might be suitable for cheese, as suggested by [Wrongfellow] [notexactly, Feb 29 2020]

Hammerspoon http://www.hammerspoon.org/
"a tool for powerful automation of OS X. At its core, Hammerspoon is just a bridge between the operating system and a Lua scripting engine. What gives Hammerspoon its power is a set of extensions that expose specific pieces of system functionality, to the user." [notexactly, Mar 08 2020]

Something similar to a slide hammer with a blade ?
-- normzone, Sep 27 2016


Or an axe - a thing who's caveman-name is synonymous with "hammer knife" - probably.
-- zen_tom, Sep 27 2016


A squirt or two of spray cooking oil on the knife does the trick, I find.
-- csea, Sep 27 2016


A chisel with a handle that slides toward the cutting edge, if heavy enough, would act like a slide hammer. The chisel would act normally but in needed cases, tapped with the sliding handle.

I don't think it would be good for cheese though, a bit sticky unless you like cheese dried out. A cheese chisel then, might be appropriate.
-- wjt, Sep 29 2016


How about a cheese chainsaw?
-- Wrongfellow, Oct 04 2016


I remember what I thought was a Monty Python sketch showing one of those nordic handheld cheese slicer tools one draws across the cheese. The next scene is putatively the Norwegians using this device in a chaotic frenzy, hacking at the cheeses, prying bits off which go flying etc. But unlike everything else Python has done I cannot find that on Youtube to link it. Can I have dreamed it?
-- bungston, Oct 04 2016



random, halfbakery