Yes! You Can Cut Rolls Of Oramask 813!

In an earlier blog post, I sang the praises of Oramask 813.  It makes sign making so easy and so fun that you’ll find it hard to stop.  This means at some point, you’ll find yourself needing more Oramask 813.  If you’ve been crafting for a while, you know how the expenses add up.  It becomes necessary to buy the supplies in bulk for both convenience sake and to save money.  Today, I’m going to show you how you can cut rolls of Oramask 813 to save yourself a decent amount of money.

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Why Cut Oramask In Half?

As you know, your home craft cutter, whether it is a Cameo Silhouette or a Cricut cutter, will cut up to 12 inches wide.  Wide format vinyl cutters cost a little more money and aren’t usually something the casual home crafter has unless they’re moving to production on a larger scale.  Those cutters will cut vinyl up to 48 inches wide.  So, Oramask 813 (and most vinyl) comes in 3 different widths:  12, 24 and 48.  Obviously, as a home crafter, the 12-inch width is going to be the most appealing to you.

But know this:  you can save some significant money by buying wider rolls of Oramask 813 and cutting that roll in half.

Most of us start out buying the 12 inch by 20-foot roll.  That’s a relatively small investment at around $20.  It costs about $1.01 per foot.  Since most of my signs are 12×12 inches, that means I spend $1.01 just in Oramask 813.  While $1.00 isn’t too much to invest in something that is inexpensive to make, everything adds up.  It’s good to cut costs wherever you can whether you’re selling your signs for profit or just making them for pleasure.

If I look at the price of a 24 inch by 10-yard (30 feet) roll, the price is $34.99.  That’s only $15 more than what I’m paying for the 12 inch by 20-foot roll.  And if you’ll notice, that’s 10 YARDS of material…or 30 feet.  But wait, it’s 24 inches wide, which means that’s twice the width I need…and if I cut that roll of Oramask in half, that means I have TWO 12×30 feet rolls.  This makes my cost about $.58 a foot.  So instead of spending around $1.00 per 12×12 signboard, I can spend $.58.  That’s almost a 40 percent reduction in costs just on the Oramask.

Yes, we CAN cut costs when we cut our rolls of Oramask in half!

How to cut rolls of Oramask

I had heard that you can cut rolls of Oramask with a power miter saw. I had ordered the 24-inch wide roll from Amazon.  So, I decided to get brave one afternoon and I broke out the saw.

I started out by wrapping the middle of the roll all the way around with masking tape.  Then, I marked 12 inches in the middle of the roll.

After I marked it, I put it under the miter saw. I cut the Oramask very slowly, which is hard for me since I tend to move at 100 mph all of the time.   It worried me a little bit because this saw is about 12 years old and we’ve never changed the blade to my knowledge.  I did get lots of plastic fluff while I was cutting it and that made me a little nervous, but it’s probably no different than getting sawdust when cutting wood.  I guess it’s maskdust?

Success!!  It’s that easy to cut rolls of Oramask 813!  I now have two perfectly cut rolls of Oramask 813 and I saved a little chunk of change by buying in bulk.

A Word About Buying In Bigger Bulk

You’ll notice the next step up on my chart above, is the 50-yard roll of Oramask.  After cutting that roll of Oramask in half, you would have 300 feet of material to work with!  But you’ll also notice the price tag.  It’s almost $120 to purchase that much material.  Now, if you’re making and selling 300 signs a month, then by all means, it makes sense to buy that much Oramask and probably more.  But if you’re a casual crafter and making signs just for yourself or gifts, it doesn’t make that much sense to wrap your money up into something that will likely last you the entire year and beyond.  Make sure you spend your crafting dollars wisely.  I can justify spending $15 more to get three times the amount of product.  I can’t justify spending $130 up front for something that may take me a year to use.

Would Other Saws Work?

I’m lucky enough to have a power miter saw and I know that’s not always a common household tool.  It comes from years of living through my big, fat, never-ending remodeling project otherwise known as Re-crafting A Farmhouse.  Would a hand saw work?  Perhaps, if it was a good, sharp edge that was never used to cut anything else and if you moved slowly in your cutting motion.  I think a coping saw might work if you were to put masking tape around the diameter of the tube to hold the Oramask in place.  I’ve never tried it myself.  If you give it a try, let me know your results!

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What will you do to Craft Your Happy, today?