the warmer the better. old wrap , if it is nitrocellulose can get pretty brittle. acetate wrap can be very brittle. keeping it warm , even using a hair dryer on it a bit, helps the knife cut the wrap , rather than cracking into it.

+1! Yes Sir That's exactly how I do it, but I never make a "final" cut. I just keep scoring it lightly until it finally separates, even if it requires four or five scores. I like Calfskin's tip of keeping the wrap warm and pliable. Makes sense.

Mike

Good Idea about it being a little warm. It is the old Ludwig sparkle wrap. Might be a little brittle, but in good shape. When I finish I will post the drum. Might be next week.

Do you warm the knife or the wrap?????

I have a neighbor with an aluminum brake, used to bend aluminum sheets for flashing and what not. Anyway, he let me use that to cut my wrap. Slid the wrap into the clamp, measured, and cut with a new blade on a utility knife. It was perfect for getting the inlays for my bass drum cut. The brake has a very long, maybe 12 feet or more, surface, so it was great at getting nice straight cuts.

If you really want to get crazy, the best tool would be a cutter from a print shop bindery! Those guys use a giant machine driven blade to cut through a thousand sheets of paper like a hot knife going through butter. The blades are razor sharp. No cleaner cut is to be had on any other machine! Now if only some of us had the money to buy bindery cutters and aluminum breaks there would be a lot less wrap in the world with rough edges. :p

John

I just happen to have one of those at the shop. x-mas3 You read my mind on this John I was thinking about trying the cutter at work after reading this thread a few days ago. We print on hard plastics and vinyls and cut them in 3" lifts like butta. At some point I'll need to cut some inlays for Rogers bass hoops. And that's the plan.

When I read Rik's post about the aluminum break, it made me think of the cutter in the bindery. You could stack drum wrap in one of those and make super-clean and accurate cuts every time. The damn blade on some of those machines is several feet long by a foot or more wide. We're talking serious cutting-iron here. The blades are honed to be as sharp as razors that you would shave with. Samurai action... Hanzo steel!

I'm sure there's more than a few old bindery guys walking around with missing fingers... :p That story I told earlier about nearly severing the pad off of my index finger happened while I was cutting down a press plate by hand. I knew the rule about cutting across where your hand is placed, but I made the cut using a lot of pressure on the blade and my finger slipped off the straight-edge just as I made the cut. Whango-de-tango... blood everywhere! You'd think there was a mass murder if you saw the plate area after the accident. Looked like somebody had cut out somebody else's heart on the plate inspection table! 13 stitches to sew the pad back on my finger.....

John

Boy your not kidding those blades are wicked sharp. I have to be very careful changing the blade in our cutter. It's 40" wide and takes some grunt to muscle it in place. Fully automated though and clamp pressure is adjustable on the fly and will cut in inches or milimeters. All computer programed. We'll have to compare scars sometime. I had my fingertip sewn back on by a ER intern who almost passed out looking at my injury. Fingertips don't belong between a belt and pulley. :) Worst was catching 3 fingers in the press one time. I'll spare everyone that grizzly story. Thankfully today safety is much better on these machines. Hey at least we can still count to ten on all fingers!! And yes have let my share of 3-4 fingered bindery guys too.

Sorry I'm getting a bit off topic here.

> Sorry I'm getting a bit off topic here.

Not at all! If hearing our horror stories makes Tim a little more careful/mindful when he goes to use tools like box-cutters and straight-edge's, then it's all good. That's why I wrote the 'Tim, be careful' post earlier.

Been dere, done dat!

John