If the knife shreads and tears, it's not a good instrument to pry at the
Pu-erh, IMO. The idea is to wedge, wriggle, and wiggle from an edge so as
not to harm the leaves.

Mike,

I have a feeling that if a puerh is not a whole leaf variety but rather a
broken leaf (Like Dai bamboo) it is better not to further break the
break-off piece. It actually prolongs the extraction during the coarse of
several steeps and makes them less contrast. To my surprise it stayed intact
(more or less) through 4 steeps and fell apart only later. That made my
first steeps less intense and my late steeps stronger and more consistent
with the earlier. To break it off I carefilly insert a sharp knife couple of
times along the line that I want to break it off and carefully detach the
piece. It comes off the cake pretty solid. I also noticed that this way it
is also less sensitive to hotter steeps probably because the inner part is
not getting skolded right away.
I guess the whole leaf cakes do not require this for obvious reasons. Also
the whole leaf cake won't hold on in one piece for a long time anyway.

Just an observation.

Sasha.