Get To Da Choppa!!!!!

No. I haven't been watching "Predator" again, nor playing out its more entertaining bits on the wargames table. Instead the title refers to my recently arriving birthday present from my mother in law. MiL is great because she just asks me to buy myself something I'd like so satisfaction guaranteed :)

Anyway, my present was a "Chopper II" modelling tool from Northwest Short Line, sold by EMA Model Supplies in the UK. Basically it is a razor blade in a chopping handle mounted on an aluminium base that has an inlaid rubber cutting board. Also included are  30, 45, and 60 degree removable cutting guides that are secured in place using clamps. This means you can set it up to cut items consistently to the same length and/or angle very, very quickly and consistently. I decided to test this on its first run out today, cutting bases for 51 1/1200 renaissance galleys and 21 bergantines. This would normally be a job for an hour or two and getting consistent corner cuts  on them all would have been quite annoying (not to mention prone to error). Once I'd cut the 30mm wide strips from which the bases were to be formed it took about 20 minutes using the Chopper, and every cut pretty much perfect (apart from a few where I realised I'd not screwed the clamps down tightly enough, but that just meant the strips were a bit too long and thus easily cut down).

So, an excellent piece of kit, guaranteed to improve productivity. The only downside I can see is that the measurements are all imperial, so I will need to produce a metric overlay. Oh and the blade is quite sharp so don't accidentally get your finger in the way ("ain't got time to bleed")

Oh, by the way, did I mention the galleys? More on these later.....