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I'd like to make rounded corners. Unfortunately, the only ones available in my country punch additional patterns besides rounding the corner. I purchased a punch that has the following result:

Cut out template

It looks like this:

enter image description here

The hearts are solid pieces of metal:

enter image description here

How could I modify this to make a regular corner punch? Or how might I bypass the heart feature in another way?

Matt
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rachel1
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  • Please edit the tags, this is not about papercutting. – Keelan Jun 15 '16 at 08:18
  • @CamilStaps Do you have a suggestion for a more appropriate term? Or is it more that we're talking about tool modification rather than papercutting? – Erica Jun 15 '16 at 10:54
  • @Erica sorry, I haven't been around much lately so I don't know what tags there are now. But I would expect papercutting would relate only to cutting with a craft knife, not with punch tools like this. Maybe there is a tag related to tool modification? – Keelan Jun 15 '16 at 12:54
  • @CamilStaps While papercutting is not supposed to mean just cutting paper in general the current tag wiki is not limited to craft knives. Tool modification might be appropriate but I wonder if another tag would be useful as to help future users find this. – Matt Jun 15 '16 at 23:39
  • I think you can absolutely make it just cut a corner, but you can't do so temporarily, or reversibly. Are you 100% ok with never using this tool to cut hearts again? – BrownRedHawk Jun 17 '16 at 15:32

1 Answers1

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If you are just trying to remove the hearts feature, or any feature for that matter, from the punch then you would have more luck disassembling the punch and cutting off those portions. I don't know how your particular one comes apart but some are designed to be reassembled. Consider the following one where you are able to remove the cutter:

enter image description here

What you could do now is use a hacksaw or rotary tools to remove the areas that you do not need. Vises or clamps can help keep the cutter stationary while you are cutting. Be safe and use eye protection when doing metal work.

You might risk small indentations from the heart recesses but I don't think, if it does happen, that it will be significant.

I suppose you could just use a rotary tool while the cutter is depressed but that would be more difficult and would damage the surface of the punch as well.

Matt
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  • Unfortunately, because the die has to mate to the cutter, you'd also have to be able to ADD material to the positive end of the die, otherwise you would not get the expected result. That will prove much more challenging. – BrownRedHawk Jun 17 '16 at 14:47
  • @BrownRedHawk I am now not sure if I misunderstood the question. If this was just about removing the hearts why would anything need to be added? I was under the impression that is already rounded the corner and the hearts were undesired. – Matt Jun 17 '16 at 14:49
  • If you just wanted to remove those cutting heads, you could get away with it (I think) but any other shape or cutting change you'd want to also change the female portion of the die. – BrownRedHawk Jun 17 '16 at 14:51
  • Yes that would be more difficult. I was only suggesting removing features here. As long and the punch does not rely on the hearts being there to keep the punch straight this should work. Adding to the tool would be more difficult as you say. . – Matt Jun 17 '16 at 14:52