This strip of wood is held in place on top of the cutting strip in order to hold it when soldering the strip to keep it perfectly flat, and to prevent burning the fingers. The cutting strip gets very hot when it is being soldered in place.
Soldering Cooky Cutters Together.—See that your soldering copper is well heated and tinned; apply soldering paste to the entire joint where the cutting strip rests on the flat piece of tin and then apply the solder carefully in the usual manner with the hot soldering copper.
It will be found comparatively easy to apply solder to the longer parts of the strip, such as those forming the sides of the tree, but do not attempt to solder in the narrow crevice or crevices formed between the tree foliage, the trunk, and the top. Solder only where it is easy to introduce the point of the soldering copper, then apply solder inside that part of the design forming the tree trunk as illustrated in [Fig. 23] by the dark lines.
Fig. 22.
The cutting strip need not be soldered to the flat piece of tin forming the back in every small crevice that is not convenient to the soldering copper. But it must be soldered in such a way as to prevent the cutting strip from bending out of shape when used for cutting. So, if you may not solder it outside, solder it inside.
Be sure and hold the cutting strip firmly down to the flat tin with a flat piece of wood when soldering. If the soldering does not go along well, stop and read over Chapters [IV] and [V] on soldering. Take plenty of time and make a good job of it.
When the cutting strip is firmly soldered to the tin, trim away the edges until they appear as shown in [Plate VIII]. Do not try to follow every indentation in the design but cut to the general smooth shape indicated which leaves no sharp corners. The edges of the tin forming the back of the cutter may be smoothed over with a small piece of fine emery cloth or fine sand-paper. Rubbing the edges gently with the emery cloth will dull them so that they are less apt to cut the fingers. This applies only to the flat piece of tin forming the back or top of the cutter, for the edges of the cutting strip should be left sharp.
Punch two or more holes through the back of the cooky cutter to form air vents as you did when making the biscuit cutter.