Paper Saw Blades — Cricut Joy

Paper cutting discs are surprisingly durable when cutting wood, foam, paper, and plastics. They are easy to make by hand but since I like to cut several types of materials I find a cricut lets me make several sizes at once very quickly. One of the benefits of cutting small items with paper is a much cleaner cut and less sawdust being thrown everywhere.

Ruler - Used to measure diameter of desired disc size.
Cricut Joy - This will be used to make perfect circles out of paper.
Card Stock - Stiffer than printer paper, will cut longer without needing to be replaced.

Simple enough right? Gotta know how big you’re cutting. Paper blades bends when making deep cuts, so small wood rods for example would benefit from a smaller blade diameter to minimize flexing and produce cleaner cuts. 2 inches is a standard size for most small wood crafts involving popsicle sticks

Measure out rectangles of card stock using 4.5 inches by 6.25 inches as your dimensions. Don’t worry if they’re a bit crooked as you probably won’t be using the entire sheet of card stock, I fit 4 two inch discs per sheet.

I don’t have internet at the moment and cannot show screenshots as the software only works online, so I will update soon with images of my work flow. No worries as it’s very simple: Simply create two circles found in the Shapes tab. Then find the “align” tool, when selecting both circles simply use the “Align by Center” tool to have your main disc align with the small hole that will be used to mount your disc on tools. Lastly use the “Cut” option while both circles are selected and you will end up with two objects, a small circle and your cutting with with a small hole in the middle, go ahead and discard the small disc as it’s a leftover from the cut tool. Lastly go ahead and make the disc following the design softwares instructions. The material type setting I use is “Deluxe Paper” as this seems to provide the best cutting pressure across various types of papers.

Try high speed rotary tools and cutting very slowly, if you force the blade too fast it will start to shred and eventually fling ash everywhere.