Hey Stone, what are those slides made of? Looks like plastic or phenolic or something.
I've got 2 spare 8x10 slides to cut down, wondering whether I should mix and match and cut the metal or plastic. I've got some nice proper tinsnips, but they have a habit of making metal curl when I cut it, or I could sacrifice the sharpness of my paper-guillotine but get a better cut...
That is a clean cut. I used an x-acto knife and the edges were rough, it didn't look nice on the negs. Sometimes I lost track of which part was exposed and ended up double exposing it. I really don't use it much anyway.
It's just a fidelity elite dark slide, the flexible plastic. Everyone thinks you should use a knife but that's a poor choice.
This is one of those times we have to admit that "women know better" (that's a semi-sexist joke, in reality anyone could own one) I used a tool that seamstresses use to cut fabric, often quilt makers use them, it is essentially a "pizza cutter wheel" it's a round blade and you roll it, the common brand is "fisker" you can see mine in the photo, it's PINK (for breast cancer) and a very large ruler and a self healing bottom board, all can begotten at the local sewing / craft / fabric store. I used the clamps to clamp the ruler down to the board and keep it all still, and rolled back and forth with the cutter making a score and then following that score over and over as it went deeper and finally through.
Remember measure twice cut once...
And the edges were ALMOST perfect, very smooth and would have been fine but I'm a perfectionist so I QUICKLY took a flame to the edges to melt the plastic just enough so they were smooth (this was very fast movement, not holding still. I held still for too long just at the intersection of the X and Y axis and it melted and deformed a bit which annoyed me, but since it's at the top it doesn't affect the picture.
Hope that helps, just got back all my color 8x10's from Praus and WOW!!!!