My trimmer...

Ok, so I have a trimmer I love. I know it's hard to find a great trimmer so I'm gonna tell you all about it. It's name is Dahle 507 I bought it from Oozak. It's not cheap, I believe the current price is around $70. The blade is self sharpening so it should not need to be replaced ever. I have a friend who has had one for years and she says it cuts as sharp as ever. I've had mine about 4 months and it's still perfect.

There are some tricks to it and I'm going to share them here for all the people who I have told to buy it who then did buy it and might want to know the tricks.
This is the trimmer with it's nomal blade. You will not need to push down on the blade to cut, simply pull it along it's metal track. Your paper goes UNDER the plastic paper holder thingie. (see it there?) Do NOT EVER EVER EVER try to remove this plastic thing without taking the blade cartridge totally off. I tried to pull it up to get a bit of sticker off it and broke it. The trimmer does not work without it and it is expensive to replace. I was heartbroken, but the wonderful people at Oozark were able to get me a deal on a replacement.
When you want to take the blade off you have to remove this little red thingie from the end.

Sometimes I can just push on it from the outside and slide it off but sometimes not. I have weak fingers. When I can't just pop it off I just reach under here and see the little notch part? I just pull that back with my finger and it comes right off. No sense hurting yourself!


This is one of the deco deges. You can get it with the fancy edges, (I believe that's when it costs around $70) or not for less money. You cannot go back and add them later if you don't get them though, it costs almost as much as a whole trimmer to buy them seperate. See the orange plastic thing, I remove that.
Then you slide it on your trimer bar. The plastic thing on the right in the photo is ONLY for when you are using the deco blades. It's a floppy cutting mat thing. If you try to use it with the stright blade the blade will push your paper down into the space between the mat and the cutter and give you a funky edge. Also, the deco edge blades DO requre you to push down on the colored button them as you cut. At first this annoyed me but then I realized that it was great because I would not accidentally leave a wavy edge in there and cut with it when I really wanted straight. If you try it just won't cut unless you push the button.

The deco blades are deckle, wavy and perforated. I honestly don't use them that much but it wasn't much more to get the cutter with them. I use the perf blade some and everyone thinks it's very clever. When it's all assembled I think it's very safe, the blade is almost touching the bottom of the trimmer so you can't really get at it and there is no arm that comes up and down. The blades that you are not currently using however do not have covers so keep them out of reach of little fingers! All the blades are SHARP!

The cut edge I get with this trimmer is super smooth. I have never seen a trimmer cut this sharp and I love that.

Downfalls:
You can only cut maybe 3 sheets of cardstock at a time. Maybe 4 but don't try to push it.
There is no swing out arm for measuring. The part you can see on there goes to 6 inches, so for most projects with cardmaking that's enough. There is a ruler on it because it's 13 inches long the other way so if I need a longer than 6 inch cut I just use the ruler and make a tiny mark with a pencil and then line that up.

That's all the negative I can think of.

Ok, I hope you found this useful, if not don't worry I'm gonna post a card right now! ;)

Pam asks a good question in the comments so I will answer here:
(her question is how do you know a narrow cut is straight as there are not a lot of lines on the trimmer (I think they are only every half inch) to use as a guide.)
Pam, I'm gonna go pm you with this too, but for a small piece I use the little dents in the plastic thingie you slide paper under to make sure it's straight. Actually almost all my mats are whatever it is to that first edge. (I'm sorry you just have to have the trimmer to see what I mean on that)