Cutting Out Skins Quickly
I’ve been very busy the last few days and a bit tardy posting to the blog. However, I’ve made a lot of progress on the skins and legs, and will hopefully catch up with all the blog entries over the holiday weekend.
In the meantime here’s a quick tip for those of you cutting out your skins.
This may not be to everyone’s liking and my old my woodwork teacher would hate me for this, but I used a sharp wood chisel to punch out the pieces. I didn’t use a hammer or anything, I just had to push hard to break the tabs. Even on the super thin laser lines there was no marks left on the skin to speak of. I just lined up the chisel on the inside and pressed down on the little tabs.
I’d tried a bunch of different methods, from using a small saw blade on the wider cut-outs, to a Stanley knife on the thiner lines, I even tried a thin Dremel disc, but none worked as well or as quickly as the chisel. I found that the dremel would easily mark the skins or cut a wider undesirable lines and the knife blade would dull too quickly.
Guy V remarks on December 5th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
I did this too and it works really well.
Thanks for the great tips Chris!
Paul B remarks on January 14th, 2008 at 10:50 am
That’s a great idea. The set of skins I have, from 2006, were cut very, very finely. I think they used the wrong size beam as the set I bought in 2005 weren’t nearly as difficult. Sadly, several areas of my skins, notably near the utility arms, were very difficult to pop out. As a result I have some “warbling” in those areas.