The Origami Forum

I have to disagree with you, it doesn´t cut along the fold, this is only what it should do but never does! You can believe me, I tried it several times and my knifes where razor sharp, but the sharper the worse. The only thing that worked was a dull ruler, but than you can crease it without any tool as well.
Also I haven´t found those envelope openers very useful, my tools of choice would be a cutting mat, a metal ruler and a sharp knife (haven´t ever tried rotary cutters).

Tjips,

I'd love to master your method because I've seen people using it with very good results, but no matter how many times I've tried, I always stray form the crease and end up with a terrible cut paper.

origami_8

The trick, I've found, lies in the angle at which you hold the blade. An angle of about 140° with the uncut outside of the fold. It is always important not to push the blade through the paper, but slice with enough lateral pressure so that it keeps contact. Don't move your hand along the cut, rather let the tip do most of the dropping. And of CARDINAL importance is to keep enough pressure on the two layers of paper (best is pressing down just behind the blade) so to prevent creep from occuring (always wanted to use the term ) That is about it.

There's an interesting technique that I learned from Michael Lafosse during the summer that involves nothing more than the piece of paper and a sharp knife. And no, the knife isn't an x -acto knife or a rotary blade or anything of that sort. It's actually more of a really sharp kitchen knife. The method involves allowing the knife slide into a fold, cutting it exactly along the fold.

He stressed that a sharp knife was necessary and that it has to fall into the fold, never upward against it. This will produce a straight edge, assuming that you can fold straight.

This combined with folding proper 90-degree angles by lining up two points along a straight line can produce good squares with a minimal amount of tools. It's really amazing compared to all the trouble I had with other methods.

I stay at my metal ruler and stanley knife...

I personally crease hard and lick the paper to make it easy to rip I can't even taste the paper anymore.

im trying to fold satoshi kamiya's phoenix cp. there is a part (the claws) where i can't make the crease straight. it's the crease that runs all the way down the paper (there are 2 creases, actually) and i can't seem to get the crease parallel to the edge. i dont want to make any unnecessary creases, because it's a cp. this problem occured in the last cp i folded. i folded it once by luck, and then i went to try it a second time, and i couldn't fold the creases perfectly parallel to the edge. its bugging me!!! is there a trick to doing this?

Erm... First, wich version are you talking about? Second, if your problem is to fold the flap parallel to the edge and can't manage to, then maybe it's because your square isn't perfectly square. Try checking that. Otherwise, just try aligning yourself with the edges and other parallel creases you might've made before.

ilithiya wrote:Malachi brings up a good point. Guillotine cutters have a nasty tendency to cause the papers to shift as they're being cut, and this is particularly noticeable when you're cutting a stack. The hobby sized photo guillotines are pretty worthless.

Rotary cutters, both handheld and frameset, cut in a different manner and cause much less shift during the cut. They're also vastly easier to keep razor sharp than guillotines.

Guillotines chop, rotaries slice. Most rotary blades are also sharpened on both sides for a good V edge, where guillotines are sharpened on one side for a slanted edge (which is what causes the shift).

Thanks, Malachi! (And sorry for my rambling!)

Illy

I like the guillotine style, not the rotary cutter style. I didn't try it yet, but someday I want to buy it.

The advantage from guillotine style is with it I can cut large paper even if the paper is very large.

But still, you must know the right way to use it. I always get the accurate result.