Paper, how do I cut thee? Let me count the ways…
A few years ago if someone had asked me what I cut paper with I would have said, “A pair of scissors, of course.” Then I came to the Preservation Lab.
We cut a lot of paper here. It can be in big sheets, little sheets or tiny scraps. It might be heavy or lightweight, made of short fibers like the ubiquitous wood pulp paper or long fibers such as Japanese kozo paper. We use it for different things too. Heavy board for book covers and boxes, corrugated board for different boxes, light board for folders, paper for pages or repairing spines, Japanese paper for mending tears and making hinges, newsprint for waste paper to catch adhesive overflow. With so many variables it helps to have a few options for cutting the paper.
Probably the tool we all use most often for cutting paper is a scalpel. We each have a least a couple at our work station. My go-to scalpel is the #11 which has a fine tip and straight, angular blade. The #23 with its curved edge is good too, depending on the particular task. Scalpels are great when we need to make a nice clean cut trimming excess paper from a repair, or we use them with a metal straight edge when we need to make a long cut that wouldn’t be straight enough if cut with scissors.
The board shear is absolutely my favorite tool in the entire Lab. It’s basically a huge paper cutter with a guide for accurate measuring, a guard to keep limbs intact and a foot pedal that activates a clamp to keep the material being cut from shifting. It can cut the thick cardboard we use to make clamshell box enclosures and it’s also great when we need to cut very large sheets of paper. It gives a nice straight edge and precise square corners.
A lot of waste paper gets used here. We use leftover scraps of paper or cut up sheets of newsprint. Sometimes we need a piece of waste paper in a hurry and can’t find the right size at hand so we cut a piece to size by folding it and pulling our bone folder down the edge of the fold, by placing a heavy straight edge on it and pulling the paper up against it, or even by placing the paper on the square outer edge of our work bench and pulling down.
Japanese kozo paper requires a special approach. One of its most important characteristics is its long, flexible fibers. If we cut the paper so its edge is feathered a small piece of paper can have a strong hold when repairing a tear. Depending on the amount of feathering desired we use a # 23 scalpel, an awl, or a water pen drawn along a straight edge. Then we gently pull the two pieces apart.
We actually do use scissors sometimes. We have different types of those too. The regular ones are used when precision is not mandated. The small ones are great for trimming excess paper in tight areas where a scalpel and self-healing mat won’t fit. We have non-stick scissors for cutting things with sticky adhesive on them and carpet shears which are useful because they hold your hand out of the way from the material being cut – very handy when cutting
Lightweight utility knives with snap-off blades are good for intricate cuts when making corrugated cardboard boxes. Large ones help with cutting details in the heftier binder’s board.
Then there are the paper trimmers. They are like a small board shear. They too have a guide and a guard but they use a manual clamp instead of a foot clamp to help keep the paper from shifting in the middle of a cut. We use them when we need a very straight, square cut and the piece of paper is too small for the board shear.
The guillotine cutter allows us to cut a stack of paper almost an inch and a half thick. This is great when we have a book with uncut pages or when we are creating book models. Sometimes a book with uncut pages is too thick or delicate for the guillotine and then we would use a page separator. This functions a little like a letter-opener and has a dull edge so as not to accidentally poke or slice through the paper of the joined pages as you slide the knife between them.
Corner-rounders can cut through thick cardboard and give a more finished look to enclosures while keeping corners of flaps of from catching on things or becoming dog-eared with regular handling.
Our two mat cutters come in handy when we need to dispose of an old, acidic mat and create a new archival one for a document or work of art on paper. We have one regular style which can do both straight and beveled cuts for larger projects plus a hand-held pull style makes beveled cuts in smaller mats easier.
I have to say that having all these tools at hand at work has spoiled me. Now when I want to cut a big piece of paper or gift wrap around the house my first thought is, “Wish I had a board shear…”
Veronica Sorcher — Conservation Technician (PLCH)
