d’Arte Board

I love my scalpel, it kicks X-acto knife ass, but I also have to admit it’s heavy, and has an awkward handle that requires a lot of medical tape wrapped around it to be comfortable for long usage. Even then I have been known to put so much pressure on my index finger that I lose feeling in it for days. I can deal but I’m still going to keep my options open for something better.

I picked up two items, the first is this odd looking thing, and the second was this, which is supposed to be designed for use on curves.

The first one is brilliant. I swapped out the X-acto blade that came with it and fitted one of my scalpel blades instead and it was wonderful.

It sits over your finger and looks like it would be uncomfortable, but outside of getting used to having to put it on and take it off, instead of just picking it up and putting it down like a regular blade or pair of scissors, it was remarkable how quickly I adapted to it. Cutting became more like drawing, and there was an instant difference in the quality of the cuts on curves. Curves are always the biggest challenge because stylus style cutters tend to get hung up at the apex, leaving awkward marks.

I’m not really surprised that I love this, I grew up on Fiskars and they still make my favorite scissors, and just a heads up to JD, they also do a version of this finger led style for rotary cutters.

Now the other one I picked up I really wanted to like, and I actually spent a few weeks trying to track down the right item based on seeing it used in a video. At last success was found in the craft store, and the X-ACTO X3253 Designer Series Craft Swivel Knife (in pink!) was purchased.

It looked good on paper, but was awful with paper.

The grip is fat and clunky, and that blade is so short that you almost can’t see it over the flared flange of the handle. I had to get my nose right down to the paper to see what was going on. In addition to that problem there is a heavy drag to the blade and it tends to pull off in directions you did not intend for it to go, so it completely lacked the precision it was supposed to deliver. It seems silly to comment on anything other than the function but I was also bothered by the lurid shade of pink, something between that and the shape of it kind of made me feel like I was drawing with an ugly pink butt plug.

Yeah I said it.