PAPER CUTTER
Material: Heavy copper, No. 8 gauge, 10 inches long by 11⁄4 inches wide.
Tools: Drill press and drills, jewellers' saw frame, cold chisel, files, vise, emery cloth, few wire nails (1⁄2 in.) two blocks of hard wood, one, 10 × 11⁄4 × 11⁄4 ins., and the other, 6 × 2 × 1⁄2 ins.
Cut out the design and paste it on the copper plate. If our shears could cut copper as heavy as this we would have little trouble to cut our design out. But the shears can't do this work, so we have to put the copper into the vise and cut the design out with a cold chisel and hammer. Place the copper into the vise with the line of design to be cut flush with the top of the vise. With hammer and chisel, cut along this line. The back part of the vise will act as a shear and help in the cutting and will prevent the copper breaking away and leaving the edge rough. When this is done, place the paper knife in the vise and file all the edges smooth. Now that it's cut out and smoothed up we are ready to saw out the design in the handle. To do this drill holes in the design as a starting point for the sawing. Take the drill press and put a 1⁄16-in. drill into the chuck. Drill a hole in any part of the design. Take the jewellers' saw frame and fasten one end of the small saw into one of the legs of the frame; push the loose end through the hole made by the drill. Fasten the loose end to the other leg of the saw frame so the saw is fairly tight. In order to saw properly, we must have something to support the piece while we are working on it. This is best done by taking a block of wood 6 × 2 × 1⁄2 ins. and cutting out a V-shaped notch in one end. Place this in the vise, or nail one end of it to a bench so that the V-shaped end will extend over the bench or vise to be free to work upon. Put the handle to be sawed out on this block so that it will be supported on both sides of the parts to be sawed out (see sketch of work in vise). The saw will play freely up and down in the notch. All sawed work is done in the same way.
Block for sawing metal
To file the edges sharp: Take your hard wood block, 10 × 11⁄4 × 11⁄2 ins.; fasten the cutter down tight by driving two short wire nails half their length into the wood at each end of the cutter. Place the cutter between these nails, bend the ends over, and fasten down (see sketch). Place all into the vise jaw and tighten it up. With a rough flat file, file the edges down, working from the centre line both ways. When one side is filed about half the thickness of the copper, bend the nails, take off the cutter. Reverse it, put it back, and file as before. Do this until the edges become sharp.
