Cutting Straight Edge and Ruler

[cteno4]

Just got this from Amazon. I've been slowly replacing a lot of my cheapo rulers and tape measures in the shop with high quality ones. When we were cutting out layout 3.0 modules we used a tape measure whose end had slipped about 3/64"... I knew better, always check a tape measure now and then, especially when starting a big project and better, use a ruler when ever you can easily!

 

My shop rulers were cheapo ones with just painted markings and a bit fat on marker lines and most 1/8" min as well. So looking around at rulers and came across this one.

 

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0083SGRP8/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1

 

It's got laser etched fine markings at 1/6" all the way and flush measured on both ends! The great feature is the raised finger guard on one side for slicing with knives! The guard rail is also super handy to grab and move the ruler with as a flat ruler is always a pain to grab fast when flat and moving requires finger tips carefully placed on the ruler edges. Last cool feature is they have a ressesed slot over the length for a strip of grip pad to fit into. Without pressure the ruler rests on the grip pad, but with pressure the aluminum edges come down on the surface and it does not slip around! Really well thought through ruler/cutting edge! For $10 a great deal for a 24" ruler with all these features. Uber handy and none of the features seem to get in the way of others. They also have 36", 48", 72" and even 96" versions.

 

The guard is very handy as when slicing longer pieces as on a straight edge your knife hand has a hard time keeping the blade perfectly perpendicular to the material and tilting or rotating the blade into the straight edge a little can easily lead to it catching the straight edge (any little ding or ruler mark can cause this) and lead to the knife going over your finger tips holding the straight edge down. Believe me I did tens of thousands of cuts in chipboard, matte board, corrugated cardboard, etc when younger doing exhibit models and a few times this happened and got good finger gashes (and nice scars to this day to boot). After my second one I had a 50" bar of aluminum stock milled with just a raised portion about 1/4" back from one side to protect the phalange tips! Weight helps hold it steady on longer cuts as well. Worked great. You can buy these premodern but they are bloody expensive and I Luckily got a 4' one a few years back at a art store closing sale for $20 (was $175), but no markings and is very big and heavy. Great for the big cuts, but not for shop use or small stuff.

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

[cteno4]

Recently found a smaller one of this kind of cutting straight edge on Temu. I got the 30cm/12in one and it’s quite nice it has a foam strip in a recess along the bottom that with a tad of pressure compresses to let the front and back edges rest on the cutting material and be very immovable while cutting if pressure down is kept. Nice finger guard and cutting edge had about a 5mm height which is nice on thicker materials to keep the blade flat on to keep the blade perpendicular to the surface. Finger guard also protects the top corner of the cutting edge which when you get nicks in it (usually from long straight edges getting knocked over while standing up and hitting hard things) is the main cause of blade jump.

 

Nice as my cutting straight edges are all long ones. It’s usually longer cuts, especially with a mat knife, where you need it the most really as it’s where you are most liable to have a blade jump the edge and get fingers. But at times I’ve had a blade jump doing smaller cuts, especially in harder, thicker materials where you bare down more.

 

I had a friend cut a few mm diagonally across the tip of his thumb by not realizing he had shifted his thumb a bit on a long cut with a mat knife on a straight edge. I’ve had a few nasty cuts from blade jumps from knicks in plain long aluminum straight edges. But I was doing thousands of cuts building large models out of chipboard so it was bound to happen. But simple little thing removes this potential risk!

 

These are the nicest design of any I’ve seen.

 

https://www.temu.com/goods.html?_bg_fs=1&goods_id=601099679689705&sku_id=17592832484891

 

jeff

[maihama eki]

Let's all chip in and buy Jeff some of these. 😄

 

https://www.amazon.com/Dowellife-Resistant-Stainless-Shucking-Mandoline/dp/B0963T7SC5?th=1

 

I actually do have a pair for shucking oysters.

Edited January 9 by maihama eki

[cteno4]

LOL! I used those chainmail gloves a lot years ago go when working in Southeast Alaska on humpback whale research. We would do some fishing from time to time on the boat for food and they were great when trying to clean and fillet a 100lb halibut on a wet slimy deck on a rocking boat! Probably saved a finger! 

 

Actually I’ve not sliced myself badly in a long time! In those younger days I literally did hundreds of cuts a day building exhibit models. I’ve had dozens of nasty slices (again most in my younger days doing a ton of this stuff and being youthfully brazen) I’ve never had to get stitches. A few scars doctor friends have looked at later and said why didn’t you get some stitches in that so it didn’t scar!

 

But like my saws stop table saw even though I never had a accident with 50 years of using regular table saws a lot, I bought a saws stop when I upgraded the last table saw as the accident could come in the next cut even if you are careful and if you can do something to take that risk away, why not do it! In this case this new small straight edges are also one of the nicest to use to cut and at the same time take away any slice risk great!

 

Best cutting story I have is at the beginning of the Monterey bay aquarium planning days I was 17 and making exhibit models for the exhibit designer and building mockups of tanks and such and experimenting with animals in them to display them in interesting and unusual ways. Mr & Mrs Packard (of HP) were funding the aquarium and were down at the design office (next to the cannery site that would the site of the aquarium) a couple of times a week for meetings. Mr Packard love to make stuff, especially metal work and had a full metal shop and forge at his Big Sur ranch. On each visit he would always stop by my workshop in the back of the warehouse to see what I was currently working on. He was fascinated by the process and experiments and would gruffly ask all sorts of questions that you had to have a good answer and reasoning for what you were doing or your ass was grass and he was the lawnmower! One day he stopped by and saw I had a big bandage on my thumb and asked what happened. I told him someone had used my 48” straight edge for something and put a good nick in it that I didn’t notice was there until I went down it slicing up a big piece of thick chipboard and the mat knife blade it it and then my thumb just behind it. I told Mr Packard I asked the metal shop next door about milling up a steel straight edge with a guard lip but they wanted a lot to do it with a minimum job cost. We had very limited funding at the time (aquarium was not a full go at that point with permitting and such) so I couldn’t get it. Next week I came in one afternoon after school and on my workbench was a beautiful 48” stainless steel straight edge with a nice guard lip and curves nicely on the backside for your finger and thumb to rest in. It was from Mr Packard, he had milled it up for me at his shop over the weekend! It was my prized possession for a few years! When I went off to grad school, all that modeling work was pretty much all done and I almost made the straight edge disappear, but couldn’t bring myself do that. I should have taken it with me as it later disappeared into the new exhibits department and vanished.
 

You can still see the scar across my thumb there 46 years later. It was a painful one as I went about 40% of the way across/into my thumbnail just about to the bone. I think I slowed my knife hand just enough when the blade skipped not to take a big diagonal off my thumb but the knife blade was embedded in my thumbnail for a slope second before I yanked it out and that is a gut wrenching feeling that is seared into memory, then lots of blood flow!

 

still 10 finger jeff

 

cheers,

 

jeff