I am a hack with a knife. Good enough to roughly trim fat off of the meat and then cut into the widths necessary to fit through the electric jerky slicer attachment on the LEM. I love the consistency of the slices. Even though it does not slices through completely, I am OK with that. I just give a slight tug when pulling out of the marinade before placing the jerky on the frogmats to go into the smoker. Sometimes, I just fold two pieces open and lay them flat. It worked much better than cutting by hand for me with or without the manual knife jerky slicer I did a review of on here or having my Dad use his Berkel meat slicer.