A Review of the Dahle Trim Ruler and Card Maker Cutting Tools

Crafting is a great pastime, one that allows you to be creative while producing items that can be given away as gifts. (This is a bonus considering the holidays are just around the corner and making your own gifts can help you save some money!) One tool that just about every crafter needs is a rotary trimmer, especially if you deal with photographs, card stock, and scrapbook pages. A tool such as this can give you a perfectly straight edge that can be difficult to obtain when using scissors or a craft knife, and there are two rotary trimmers that are worth a look: the Dahle Trim Ruler and Card Maker. This article will alert you to what's great about these two cutting tools, as well as outline their drawbacks. The Pros: Dahle trimmers are always well-made and they're safe to use. The blades on the Trim Ruler and Card Maker are sheathed in plastic, so it will be extremely difficult for you to cut yourself while trimming. The blades can also cut in two directions. These products both have cutting lengths of up to 13 inches. They can cut up to three sheets of paper in one go, plus they can trim paper, card stock, and photographs. These gadgets have built-in self-healing cutting mats, as well as a ruler that's transparent so you can accurately gauge where to cut. Each mat is also printed with a grid to aid you in your measurements. Both of these rolling trimmers come with a couple of different blades that are easy to switch out. Both the Trim Ruler and the Card Maker have straight blades that make it easy to quickly and beautifully trim your project, and each tool has two additional specialty blades that can help your get different looks. The Trim Ruler comes with wavy and perforation blades, while the Card Marker comes with scoring and deckle blades, all of which will come in handy when you're putting together a photo album or making this year's batch of Christmas cards. These trimmers are lightweight so you can travel with them easily. Imagine the fun and creativity you could experience if you brought one of them to a crafting party! Both the Trim Ruler and the Card Maker are inexpensive. A single unit only costs $29.95. The Cons: Although these tools have a pretty good cutting length, they're clearly not designed to be used in a heavy-duty capacity. They simply cannot trim a large amount of paper at once. This means these products are ideal for crafting use and could even be feasibly used for the light trimming of professional documents. However, if you need to cut a lot of paper at once, you should probably either choose a rotary trimmer with a higher cutting capacity or a guillotine paper cutter. If you want, say, the Trim Ruler, but you really want to also have the deckle and scoring blades, you'll either have to purchase the Card Maker in addition to your original choice or fork over the dough for the individual blades, which cost $6.95 a piece. One option that can help you get around this is by purchasing Dahle's Personal Trimmer Kit, which has the straight blade, plus the deckle, wavy, and perforated blades. The cutting tool in this kit has a higher capacity (7 sheets) and it's a bit more durable that Dahle's crafting trimmers. However, this kit is substantially more expensive with a price of $109.95. So you'll need to carefully think about the cutting capacity and the kind of blades you want before purchasing one of these products. Overall, Dahle craft trimmers are great for what they are: inexpensive tools that can give you and your creativity a slight edge. Although they have a limited cutting capacity, they're still good for crafting purposes and would be a wise choice for creative types who are on a budget.