No, it's just as unsafe. Use your chest to rest your knife and cutting hands on, which will serve as pivot points and you'll have more control over the cut. Rock your knife and/or cutting to make a "tongue/groove" cut instead of trying to push the blade through.
I heard most pawpaws require another genetically different variety to pollinate+make much more fruit. Self Fertile is rare, i heard maybe the Sunflower variety is self-fertile, but you'll get much more fruit if you have a 2nd variety planted close (like 8-15ft). I heard even seeds planted from the same fruit have enough genetic diversity to do this. But you should stick to 2+ different grafted varieties so you don't have to wait 10 years to find out if the seeds are true-to-parent (aka make nice big more flavorful fruit). those 2+ varieties can be on separate plants, or just grafted on the same plant as I guess thats what your question is (latter would mean you only need 1 pawpaw to get fruit).
