12 Inch Desktop Stack Paper Cutter

Haven't used this cutter very much yet, so I'm only going to comment on my experience when it arrived. When you get this item it will need moderate assembly. The only part that is pre-assembled is the cutting mechanism itself. Assembly instructions are greatly limited in detail and clarity. I ended up using the photo of the assembled cutter as my guide. It boasts of being able to cut 280 sheets of bond paper. My first cut was about 100 sheets of 20-lb bond copy paper. The blade did not cut the stack as easily as I anticipated, but it did cut it. Years ago I owned a similar product made by Martin-Yale. This brand, so far, just doesn't match the Martin-Yale quality or performance. But it does cost around $200 less. Age-old cliché: You get what you pay for.

This is a very good, but not flawless, paper cutter that we can recommend for cutting up stack of paper, including perfect-bound and saddle-stitched magazines. We purchased the QCM-8200M (12-inch) cutter in February 2011 specifically to work on a project where we were cutting up hundreds (nearly 1,000) magazines in order to scan them. We believe that these comments below would also apply to other QCM paper cutters of the same design. The cutter was heavier than expected. We had planned to keep it on a shelf and take it out only when needed, but ended up keeping it on a dedicated counter. At over 40 pounds, it was too heavy (and unwieldy) to keep moving, or to lift high enough to place on a shelf safely. For cutting, the process is easy: Place the magazine carefully into the cutter, spin the wheel to lock it into place, and slice by pulling down the arm. We used tape to mark the correct position for perfect-bound magazines, so we could slice off the binding and glue, while removing as little of the live matter as possible. Two problems. First, if we placed the magazines all the way forward against the back stop, and then locked it in place, the pages would slide and distort while slicing. Not good. We learned that we needed to stop the magazine from touching the back stop; we generally kept it about an inch back. We are not sure why this happens. The other problem is that with saddle-stitched magazines, there are staples. The cutter would slice effortlessly through the staples, but doing so nicked the blade. Frankly, we didn’t notice for a while, after which damage had been done; cuts aren’t as clean as they used to be. We then tried removing the staples with a staple remover, but then it became difficult to position the now-unbound magazine sheets properly. Ultimately, we chose to stop using the paper cutter on saddle-stitched magazines altogether. Instead, we removed the staples, folded the pages back and forth a few times, and then carefully tore the pages along the saddle seam. Overall, we are happy with the paper cutter. We are about 2/3 of the way through the project, and although we’re only using the cutter for perfect-bound magazines, it does a great job. NOTE: The blade is SHARP. We have nightmares about having children come anywhere near this paper cutter. There are lots of safety features that would help prevent accidents, and this design, with a shrouded blade, is clearly safer than a traditional cutter with a swinging blade. But still. Be careful!

The model is OK BUT.... The handle is very wobbly and comes off very easily!