I know this topic has been brought up many times and the usual answer is scribe, bend and break which I have done. Being I am using alot of styrene for roads, parking lots, walls and an intermodal yard I was thinking of getting one of those “guillotine” paper cutters. Has anyone tried these? because I am curious to know if the cut would be angled or flat and I need to cut some corregated styrene for a wall which would be difficult to scribe with a razor knife riding on a roller coaster.
I have a fairly expensive paper cutter and had never tried to cut Styrene sheet. I gave it a shot this morning and it did well on .01” and .02” but not so good on .03” and .04” was a no go. When you have to force things I don’t.
Mel
My Model Railroad
http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/
Bakersfield, California
I’m beginning to realize that aging is not for wimps.
Corrugated plastic cuts just as well as flat plastic, you either have to :
A. scribe on the corrugated side making several light passes to get through the corrugations.
or
B. Turn the sheet over and scribe on the flat back side.
The key with any is to not try to “power” through the plastic. Make several light passes. I use a #11 X-Acto blade and turn the blade over, scribing with the back side of the blade, more scraping a line than cutting it.
After years struggling with cutting different hobby materials, Styrene, Plastic, Basswood and K&S Brass using a raiser saw or hobby knife I bought a Harbor Freight Mighty Might Table saw for my hobby workbench. Works great.
https://www.harborfreight.com/4-in-mighty-mite-table-saw-with-blade-61608.html?_br_psugg_q=mini+saw
Mel
My Model Railroad
http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/
Bakersfield, California
I’m beginning to realize that aging is not for wimps.
Wow, never saw a cheap one before, got a cutoff one and it saved me on more than one ocasion. Any other gems you have found.
I have so many brand new number 11 exacto blades that I will never run out of.
For some reason I don’t throw them away. I don’t know if it’s because I think they will poke through the garbage bag and end up sticking out of somebody’s foot preferably not mine!
I have all the old used ones piled up in a plastic Tupperware bin. Sometimes I look at those old blades and wonder if I can still use one again[(-D]
Other than that I use a razor saw to cut almost everything that can’t be cut with the number 11.
My Razor Saw, She’s getting rather dull I think kind of like Judy (Just Kidding) It’s about time I go out and buy a new replacement.
For just the razor saw blade
I don’t have enough money to buy a new replacement for Judy[(-D]
TF
As mentioned above, a metal straight edge and #11 blade using the back side and having the point broken off making many passes (removing ‘pig tails’ of plastic) or a small table (12’‘x12’‘) saw with a chisel tooth blade to cut DPM building walls. I think the circle blade is 3-1/8’‘. Also sometimes a curved Dentist pick. Let the tools do the cutting, do not force the work. Also I have a few large flat files with different cuts to dress up the cut edges. Then there is the 1/4’’ fine tooth bandsaw.
In the old days, there was a slot in the back of medicine cabinets to dispose old razor blades. If you live in an old house, there still might be some.
There’s also a slot in the dispensers of X-acto blades for the same purpose. I have several empty dispensers because I buy blades in bulk these days and they don’t come in dispensers, so I have a ready source for disposing of old blades.
To OP . . . make a single steady score and then snap like a piece of glass. Firm pressure, but not too much as others have mentioned. Instead of #11, using a #2 or #24 blade might be better; they’re stiffer with less chance of flexing or tracking away from the straightedge.
Count your fingers before and after use.
Good luck.
Robert
I bought the HF Cutoff saw many years ago and it works Ok but the Mighty Might is a hundred times better.
I also bought a spare blade just incase it isn’t available later on.
Mel
My Model Railroad
http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/
Bakersfield, California
I’m beginning to realize that aging is not for wimps.
[(-D][(-D][(-D][(-D]
Man that one struck me funny Robert[(-D]
I remember that slot in the back of the old medicine cabinet[(-D] We had one of those where I grew up in St Louis Park.
Cut your fingers before and after use[(-D]
Good old number 11 and double edged razor blades, …Jaws never had it so good[(-D]
I have a big white scar on my index finger on my left hand where I whittled away a Long chunk of skin doing some Model Railroading when I was very young
I wouldn’t trade that scar on my finger for anything in the world I remember that day every time I look at it and for some strange unknown reason it always puts a smile on my face because I think that was the day I learned respect for a Sharp Blade
You should have seen the blood in the room and the trail all the way down the stairs to the bathroom next to that slot in the back of the medicine cabinet[(-D]
TF
i have a paper cutter, gulliotine style, maybe 16 inches by 18 inches …and it works good on flat styrene, 0.010 to 0.020 … don’t think it will cut 0.040, never tried, neve tried corrugated either …
The thing about the gulliotine style paper cutter is that when you try to cut multiple sheets of paper at the same time, it starts to distort the cut if it is more than a relative handful of sheets. I suspect the same would be true of a normal thickness sheet of styrene.
I notice that with my NWSL chopper - on slightly thick pieces of wood or styrene it is not a sharp clean 90 degree angle cut but slightly distorted.
Dave Nelson
I have cut .05" styrene with ordinary household scissors-no problem. Haven’t tried anything thicker.
Dante
If you have an old straight razor stone (hone) you could restore the edge on a hobby knife blade. I’ve done so.
The difficulty using a guillotine paper cutter to cut styrene sheet is the same as using scissors. The sheet can distort sideways.
A steel rule, a very sharp hobby blade and a steady hand should do the trick. If you use a steel rule with cork backing (the stationers style) it may work better steel side down as then the steel edge is flush against the styrene.
The biggest challenge is wandering of the blade. it may help to use the curved edge blade, # 10, 22 or 25 for example, rather than the #11. The curved blade tends not to wander. The tip of the #11 wanders quite easily.
I also re-sharpen my X-Acto blades and even the ones in my utility knife, using various oil-stones. Chisel-type blades are probably the easiest to re-sharpen.
However, when an X-Acto blade is beyond reclamation by sharpening, I use it for other tasks. One is for cutting wire: For soft wire, like brass or small diameter phosphor-bronze wire, all that’s needed is to use the heel of the blade to be forcefully pressed at the point you wish to make the cut…make sure to physically restrain the portion being cut off, as it will otherwise fly to places where it will never be found (unless, of course, it hits you in the eye). Do this operation on a hard surface, not on a cutting mat, as the wire will deform rather than be cut. My work desk has a glass top, which is ideal for such cutting.
For harder or thicker wire, I stick a short length of masking tape onto the glass surface, then place the wire to be cut on the tape, using pressure on the knife’s handle to roll the wire back and forth. For softer material, this will usually cut through fairly quickly or score the wire deeply enough that it can be broken-off by hand.
This technique will also work on small diameter stainless steel wire and on piano wire, too, with the scoring usually sufficient to allow the needed piece to be snapped off - much less clean-up required than if you cut the wire with side-cutters.
I’ve used the same process to cut brass tubing, but you need to keep the tubing from wandering as it’s rolled back and forth. This method is superior to a tubing cutter if you’re working with very short lengths of material.
For blades that still have their pointy tip, but are beyond sharpening, they can make great applicators for ca. I simply place some ca on the glass, then dip the tip of the blade into it, then touch the area where the joint is to be made. With the blade in the X-Acto handle, this will give plenty of reach inside a boxcar to apply ca to the
You would think by now sombody like MM or NWSL would have a razor blade that is beveled only on one side like a chisel. Then you would have a good 90* cut (hopefully if the material did not move) on one end of the material and the waste end would have the beveled cut.
If anyone here is familiar with microtomes or large-quantity paper trimmers, the operating principle is a heavy blade with a taper less than that of a #1 X-Acto but a very well-honed edge. The idea is not to have a ‘wire’ edge that turns over or blunts easily when the edge moves through material like a frozen section. The ‘waste’ side of the sheets will have a pronounced bevel and I suspect there would be value in figuring out some kind of ‘hot knife’ arrangement as any distortion on the ‘good’ side would be limited to a burr that could be easily sliced or sanded off.
The paper trimmers I used had a large screw and wheel to impose vertical cutting force, but I found the blade weight would do some of the cutting without heavy cranking in typical book paper.
I wonder if something like a heavy plane iron might be adapted to an existing vertical-slide arrangement for this kind of gang cutting in styrene…
Note that a lever-type ‘guillotine’ cutter would likely not give the necessary clean cut in styrene because of the progressive distortion of each sheet as the cut angles across it. Only if the blade comes cleanly down on the sheet will the displacement of the waste by the bevel not introduce distortion…
I just had a thought…tomorrow I am going to take a couple of styrene scraps of different thickness to work and see how the squaring shears do. They worked good for the lead sheet I would cut for two, three and four bay open hopper slope sheets and any other car that needed extra weight. I tossed the steel weight and used lead. If the lead sheet was too thick I would run the lead sheet through the rollers before cutting to size.
I find an Xacto knife blade to be troublesome because the blade wants to travel off line. So, I use a boxcutter knife to score the styrene sheet. I draw a pencil line on the styrene sheet, then clamp it down, and score the styrene sheet on the line.
On thinner sheets of styrene (e.g., 0.010"), the score will completely cut through the sheet. On thicker sheets of styrene, the score will be sufficient to allow the scored sheet to be snapped on a clean line.
Rich
Whenever possible, I like to use sheet styrene labelled as sidewalks. They come in several sizes of squares. The squares mean one side is essentially already ‘scribed’, you just count the squares and bend at the joint and you get a nice clean break.
Of course, since you’re not using it as sidewalk, you would have the smooth side up (for like a road) or on the outside (for a building etc.). For example, in this picture, I used styrene with 1/2" sidewalk squares to create squares 1-1/2" by 1-1/2" (3 squares by 3 squares). I painted the smooth sides concrete color, and put them smooth side up in the area I wanted to cover. The joints between squares are meant to reproduce the expansion joints in real concrete.
http://cs.trains.com/mrr/m/mrr-layouts/2290019.aspx
(Sorry if link is dead, for some reason this computer and the MR site don’t like to play nice together…)