you need to be sure to go straight up when you do kron that and angle the tip away from you, if you turn your blade to the side it will meet edge on edge and knick the edge, your edge should slide up his flat and vice verse.
I see a couple different ways to get into Kron. The first being stifling a cut as you describe, the second being from the bind and simple closing with a move of your hilt up into Kron. In both cases it would be on the strong and you wouldn't push out obviously until you had bound the blade. This has the effect of protecting the edge more, but I think the real advantage is that it makes sure you have a bind in Kron, so that should you go to wind your hilt around his blade, you actually have contact on it. I've found if you do this too quickly without making sure you've bound the blade, you'll miss it.
