Blade

Blades1

Blade

n. 1. A small replaceable, disposable sharp-edged and pointed piece of metal that goes into a BOX CUTTER for the purpose of making CUTS. Also called “utility knife blade.” Blades are trapezoidal, with the base providing two sharp points and a long cutting edge that may be reversed when one end becomes dull. 2. Square, single-edge razor Blades as are used in the push-up style BOX CUTTERS that are frowned upon because they are very unsafe and have an unfortunate tendency to create STORE DAMAGE.

NOTE: The approved, trapezoidal Blades come in two lengths. The longer style is necessary to prevent jamming caused by twisting the Blade in older, longer CUTTERS such as the classic S3. Newer CUTTERS, such as the S4 and later models suffer from no such problems, and can use the shorter (less expensive) Blades.

TIP: Blacken Blades. Before loading new Blades into the handle of your BOX CUTTER, take your MARKER and blacken one end of each Blade on both sides, and put a dot on both sides of the other, unpainted tip. Then, when you load a new Blade, use the silver end with the dot first. Later, after you've forgotten whether the other end of that Blade is sharp or not, look at its back end. Black means sharp and unused. Silver means toss out the whole Blade and get a new one from the cache in your handle. No thinking required!