Cutting Paper with a Jackhammer
by Steven Rossi on December 22, 2008 in Miscellaneous
So I’ve been pretty busy the last few weeks, and that’s why I haven’t posted much. One of these things that’s kept me busy is a Christmas gift that I had hoped to make for a friend. I intended to create a secret hollow book using a few older books, and I had hoped that this project would take about an hour. The instructions that I read seemed simple enough (and after all, how difficult could it be to cut a hole into paper?). Well, I was wrong. As you can see here (picture taken on my phone), this now-3-man project made use of several tools. We began with a simple X-acto knife, but quickly moved onto a drill, a reciprocating saw, and finally a circular saw. The cover of the book was cut (as you would imagine!) very quickly and easily, but we found that the pages were lined with steel. Eventually it worked out, but who would have thought paper would be so difficult to cut through? Do you have any similar experiences? Anyone ever done this project before, perhaps more efficiently?
by courtney
On January 6, 2009 at 10:49 pm
i wanted to do the same thing for chistmas as a gift for someone! a friend and i were both gonna try it, but she attempted to do it with an exacto knife and had a lot of trouble and i havent had the courage to try it yet.
by Steven
On January 6, 2009 at 10:58 pm
Trust me, I understand your concern. It’s definitely doable (even with an X-acto knife), it just takes a long time (or, in my case, a REALLY long time). I would encourage it…since it turned out cool when it was done. Just don’t expect to be done with it in a couple of minutes. Good luck. Let me know how it goes if you end up trying it!