Introduction: Turn a Sharpener Blade Into an X-Acto Knife

About: I'll do just about anything if I have the materials and tools handy.

After stumbling upon Instructable very recently, i found many of the 'ibles required a sharp scalpel or "X-Acto" Knife, which (aside from snatching them from my school classroom) are hard to come by in Australia. So I quickly got to work creating a cheap DIY one for basically nothing but a sharpener blade.

Step 1: What You'll Need:

A brief over view of what you may or may not need, depending on what you have lying around:
 - A hacksaw (for chopping off bits of the plastic sharpener, not really required but good to have)
 - A sharpener, the sharper/newer the better
 - A piece of thin soft wood, a bit of wooden dowelling will do fine. I used a piece of bamboo
 - A screwdriver
 - A small nail and a hammer
 - A knife is good to have handy too

Step 2: Preparing the Handle

Here is where the hacksaw really comes in handy
First, cut your piece of whatever into a nice pencil length.
Second, us the hacksaw or knife(takes much longer) to cut a very thin slit into the timber - make sure it's straight.
Anything thats sturdy but not too hard will do fine, so you can improvise a bit here. Sorry theres no picture for this step, i sort of forgot.

Step 3: Prepare the Blade:

Now what you need to do is get your blade out.
If required, use the hacksaw to chop enough out of it so you can access the blade easily. I did this, then realised it wasn't necessary...
Then you need to take the screw out and the blade. DO NOT throw away the screw, and make sure not to cut yourself

Step 4: Attach the Blade

Again, sorry for the lack of pics.
Now you may need to whittle your piece of wood thinner at the end with your knife so that the screw will reach both sides.
With the tiny nail, and I'm talking about one, maybe 2mm if your piece of wood is strong enough, hammer the sharp side of the nail a little bit to blunt it. This ensures that the nail won't split the wood.
NOTE: To make doubly sure you don't split the wood, hammer the nail only to the centre, then repeat with other side to finish.
Alternatively for this step, you can use a drill with a 2mm drill bit.
Once a small hole has been made, slide the blade in. You may have to hammer it in with your hammer, but be careful not to cut yourself. Once it is far enough down, line up the hole with the razor blade hole and screw it in.
To make it more secure (because my wood was a fraction  split) you can tape it up with masking tape.
If you have any more wood, you might even be able to make a lid, which will make it much safer to carry around.

Step 5: All Done!

And there you have it! A makeshift X-Acto knife, made from scratch. Be careful, and try to make it a bit more secure than my dodgy example.

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