Any tips on cutting paper with an hobby knife? I have a relatively

Keep the cutter at an acute angle with the paper for safety. Always very firmly press your ruler or else your edges won't be sharp enough. Use a steel instead of plastic ruler. After using a blade; tape it with a duct tape and then dispose it off to avoid injuries

>>548633
Checked

>>548634
>Use a steel instead of plastic ruler.
Also, this is important. When I was doing a ton of low poly pepakura work I damaged most of my plastic rulers while cutting with xacto and now they do not draw straight because of the indents and such

>>548633
"self healing" mats are a godsend. Get one if you don't have one already. >>548634 this is spot on.
Always keep blades in stock so you wont be shy about changing them. Also keep a half decent pair scissors around to deal with things that don't require a lot of precision as to save wear on your blades.

How often to change blade?

>>548665
really depends on what you're cutting. Cardboard, cardstock and foam are obviously going to take off way more life than say paper. If you're getting partial separations or it's not cutting all the way through the material under reasonable pressure try a new one. I have a strop with diamond stropping paste. (for razor blades and non-disposable scalpels) so I use that to resharpen blades rather than discard them. This may be pedantic but I put a paper weight on the back of my hand (about half a pound) and just let the knife rest with my elbow on the table then pull a piece of normal printer paper past the blade. If the paper does not separate cleanly then I put in the blade away for resharpening. You'll probably get a feel for it but I'm just never sure if it's me or the blade sometimes so I do the aforementioned.

>>548633
Sick dubs m80