Gummed and varnished papers require special care even when perfectly dry, but more so in a moist atmosphere. Varnished stock if it is very dry may nick the knife, and a clean oily (but not too oily) swab run over the bevel of the knife before the cut will make a smoother, safer cut. It is not well to use soap on the knife, especially on lithographic work.
Freshly printed work which tends to offset on the next sheet may be cut where necessary by placing strips of reglet or thick card around the margin close to the line of the proposed cut, so as to keep the pressure of the clamp off the printed matter.
Tissue paper requires to be firmly clamped to cut accurately. A clamping motion that will first exert a gentle pressure to squeeze the air out between the sheets and pack the pile down evenly all over and then apply a powerful pressure before the knife strikes the pile, gives the best results.
Accuracy is required in manifold duplicate work, where absolute register must be made, to secure the proper location of dollars in dollars columns and cents in cents columns. The ruling and printing both depend entirely on the square and accurate cutting of the stock to secure proper register.
The cutting of waxed and oiled manifold stock, if carefully jogged up, is not difficult with the newer types of clamping mechanism, especially on that type of cutting machine where the pressure of the automatic clamp is applied at first gently and then with maximum pressure, similar to the hand-clamp.
To Cut a Pile into Strips of Equal Width
This is sometimes required to be done for a large quantity of stock and it is desirable to do it with economy of time and labor. The obvious method is to first trim one edge of the stock, then set the back gage to the required width and jog the pile up to it for each cut. This method is usually accurate but requires a great deal of handling of the stock—almost three times as much as is necessary by some other methods.
The following methods require the pile of paper to be first trimmed with a true edge in order to jog it against the back gage, and also with a true edge on the opposite or front side.
1. Make a mark or place a thin paper sticker on the top surface of the front table the exact distance in front of the cutting edge of the knife to correspond with the required width of the strip. Place the pile of paper on the back table with a trimmed edge against the back gage. Move the gage forward so that the front edge of the pile comes to the mark on the front table. Make the cut. Repeat this until the pile is cut up. This requires only one jogging of the pile into place.