Do I need any sort of special knife to cut brass, or can i just use my good ol’ X-Acto?
What sort of brass are you trying to cut? My first thought is you’re not going to get far with an X-Acto. You will need a razor saw for bar stock and some snips or a jewellers saw for sheet stock.
Its about .016 inch thick brass strip, 1 inch wide, 1 foot long. I need to cut it into scale 15.5 foot length pieces, one real inch wide.
Hmm, you’re going to need some kind of tin snips or metal shears. A good pair of heavy scissors might do it, but you could ruin the scissors. What kind of tools do you have around the house?
I’ve cut my fair share of brass sheet while scrathcbuilding some steam engines so I’ll tell you what works for me. I cut brass sheet .010 and under with regular kitchen shears. Anything thicker than that I cut with a Dremel cutting wheel. It would take a LONG time, and many blades to cut .016 brass with an Xacto knife. The thickest brass I’ll cut with an Xacto is .005 and that still takes a bunch of passes and dulls the blade quickly.
Both methods will require a bit of fileing if your looking for precision cuts. I have become quite surgical with the cut off wheel as I hate fileing.
John.