How to Setup and Use a Strap Cutter

Let's talk about the strap cutter a little bit.

First of all if you're just buying one for the first time it comes like this which to me is very obvious what it does but then I play with them all the time. You see this has a little hole in it, it mates up with the the screw that's in here you just set that down. This part can be slightly annoying but you only have to do it once so you don't have to worry about it.The unit goes so that the ruler is facing the handle and we tighten that up a little bit and that's how it goes together.

That's the first part. There are quite a few adjustments here you can make but normally once they're set you're good. The blade in here goes in between these two little slots on both sides and the screws and the top hold it in place, so to insert a blade you loosen these up a little bit - they're captive unless you keep going forever they'll stay in there. You loosen them up a bit, the blade can then be slid into these slots or the old one slid out and the new one slid in the case of replacement and you make sure for safety that obviously the blade is not sticking out of either one of these slots, it's a surefire way to get yourself into the emergency room of the hospital. The back end of this has an adjustment so you can make this wider or narrower again pretty much when you have it set up for most of the leather you work with you're good. We're normally working with fairly heavy leather so you'll notice that we have quite a gap here. If we're working with lightweight leather I'd bring this together some. It also is sometimes necessary if you're working with very light leather that the blade can't be made to stay outside of these slots in that case you take yourself a pair of Nippers or as they sometimes called dikes and you break the the sharp part of the blade out that sticks out. That's the way it goes together. The ruler guide is on the bottom side and let's cut a strap.

Normally this is used for cutting straps off of a side of leather. Clearly in a closeup video like this I can't lay an entire side of leather or then you wouldn't be able to see anything if we shot it that wide so we're going to take a strip that we've already cut with this and we're just going to cut it down to a little bit smaller. The first thing you want to decide is your size. Obviously now the tool itself is does have a a scale on it but it's not super accurate. It's close but the best way we found to do it is to just put it to the mark that you want. In this case I'm marking it for 1 inch and lightly tighten the screw. Once you've lightly tightened the screw take your ruler (rusted we're in Florida everything rusts) and check the alignment with an actual ruler In this case I'm probably just the tiniest bit too narrow just a gentle tap and that's perfectly 1 - inch now tighten it down nice and tight. Now all you have to worry about is staying on the flat surface on both the top and the bottom of the cutter just simply slide it in you notice now it's touching on both sides. If it's touching on the top and the bottom then continue sliding. If this was a side of leather you'd just be pulling it down through the entire hide and in a matter of seconds you have a perfectly cut strap of leather.