How To Sharpen a Rotary Cutter (Cheaply!)

I found this idea in a few places on the internet and thought I would give it a try.

I was surprised at how well it worked!

I experimented on a really old rotary cutter and blade. I've been using the blade to trim paper for 2 or 3 (or more) years. It works fine for paper....

but definitely doesn't work well on fabric.

If you look closely you can see that it didn't cut the fabric very well. I should have used a different color (duh!), but you can see in the photo that there were a few places that the cutter didn't cut the threads.

I folded up some aluminum foil. I think there are 8 layers in the photo. I don't think it matters too much how many layers there are, but more than one layer would probably be best.

I sliced through the aluminum foil quite a few times (see the pile!) I wanted to make sure that I rolled the entire blade through the foil at least 8 times. I don't know why I picked that number, I just thought that more than once would do a better job sharpening the blade.

I used the newly sharpened rotary cutter to make a new cut to the left of the old cut.
It sliced right through the fabric!

 It wasn't quite as good as a brand new blade, but it was much better than the first cut I tried to make!

I think I'll try sharpening an old pair of scissors next. I have a pair that don't cut through plastic bags any more, so even if the aluminum foil trick doesn't work, it can't make them any worse than they already are.

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Using a Rotary Cutter

Here are a few videos teaching how to use a rotary cutter.

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