Cutting Cuben

Fiskers rotary cutter. About $18 at Walmart. Blades need to be replaced often and they're expensive ($18 for 5 or $5 each when bought separately)

I use these: http://www.amazon.com/Derma-safe-Folding-Utility-Survival-5-pack/dp/B0067EMCVI

I use a construction utility knife with the hardened blades. The blades are thicker and are a goldish color, found at home depot and lowes.

I use this- Bit pricey for DIY

I use the cheap one-sided razor blades sold at hardware stores. They work well on all types of cuben and cuben hybrid fabric, and they're so inexpensive, you can change them often to always have a sharp edge (and you can recycle the old ones — blunt them first so the recyling sorters don't get injured).

Rubbing the utility blades back and forth on a fine sharpening stone while maintaining a constant angle (same angle as the blade came with), will make them sharper than new and you can re-use them till they wear down to a stub. I am still using two after 4 years of near daily cutting of fabric. I use a simple 1 inch by 3 inch pocket stone. Don't even need water or oil.

> I have read that scissors are not recommended. Correction there: it's the Spectra threads which give a problem, not the Mylar film. The steel in scissors is not hard enough and usually gets tiny dents in it from the Spectra. That can be a problem. The answer is to use ceramic scissors. They work very well. Kyocera make some nice ones, but there are lots on Amazon and ebay. Cheers

Thanks all for the advice. I think I will use a combination of ceramic scissors and full size utility knife. Derrick

Hector says: chainsaw .

"The steel in scissors is not hard enough and usually gets tiny dents in it from the Spectra. That can be a problem." Weird. A mouse can chew through Spectra, but not steel. No dents in their teeth either. To the OP – A hot knife works pretty well also. A little more expensive than utility blades, but no blades to wear out and you can also use it to cut & seal fabric. Ryan

Hi Ryan, Funny you mention a hot-knife. As I browsed and bought scissors and the blades recommended above I saw and purchased a decent hot knife. Any one know where to get some .74 or .75 cuben? All the usual suspects are out. Zpacks had some but by the Tim I finalized measurements, they were out. Thanks again Derrick

For all my projects so far I've used rotary tools and titanium coated scissors from Costco. So far so good. The scissors where cheap and are still going strong. The blades of the rotary tools are not holding as well but still I get plenty of life out of them to not feel the need to look for something else. Cheers Pierre

I use this scissor (below) for cutting cuben and haven't had much problem. Sometimes I use a rotary blade. http://www.amazon.com/Fiskars-Non-stick-Titanium-Softgrip-Scissors/dp/B004QLCUG6/ref=pd_sim_201_5?ie=UTF8&dpID=310H73V1voL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR160%2C160_&refRID=19HW74BXPFBRHNF8WX85

The Moh's hardness scale of spectra and steel is different. It doesn't matter how thick or large the harder piece is, it will always wear away at the softer piece. Mice never encounter tiny diameter threads of steel that they have to chew through. Usually they encounter something orders of magnitude thicker and they give up very quickly. Can they scratch the surface of it…absolutely! If they did encounter steel threads, the same diameter as the spectra threads in cuben, they'd get through them easier than they would spectra. An example of the hardness trumping size, is, take the finest steel pin you can find. Now, run it across an enormous piece of cheese. You can do this, practically infinitely, destroying the cheese, until the cheese is broken down into tiny tiny pieces. The steel pin will be just fine.