Any paper crafter can tell you, if there is one tool you absolutely can not do without, it’s your paper trimmer. I have always used Fiskars paper trimmers and scissors, and so when my Fiskars Euro Trimmer was broken, I decided to splurge a little and purchased the much more expensive Fiskars Rotary Trimmer to replace it.
The main difference between the Fiskars Euro Trimmer and the Fiskars Rotary Trimmer is the cutting mechanism. On the Fiskars Euro Trimmer, a blade cartridge slides along a three track rail and the Fiskars Rotary Trimmer uses a rotating wheel blade which guides along a single track. I have heard great things about the cutting ability and the precision of rotary paper trimmers in general, and I decided to give it a go.
Both the Fiskars Euro Trimmer and the Fiskars Rotary Trimmer offer fold-out rulers, cutting guide grid lines, a stainless steel cutting surface, and the ability to cut 12×12 sheets of paper. They also have ruler markings on both sides of the blade giving you the ability to cut paper strips as thin as you need. Changing the blades on both the Fiskars Euro Trimmer and the Fiskars Rotary Trimmer was fairly easy, however it was a little easier to change the Fiskars Euro Trimmer and I frequently switched from the cutting blade to the scoring blade. When it comes to cutting paper, though, the difference is night and day.
Paper Cutting
I did not expect from either trimmer to be able to cut as much as a guillotine trimmer, that is, a paper trimmer that cuts with a long blade on a single arm. But as a scrapbooker, I very rarely need to make bulk cuts of paper, so only cutting one or two sheets at a time was fine with me. The Fiskars Euro Trimmer was great with the cuts; I almost never had edges come out ragged, even when cutting textured cardstocks. The Fiskars Rotary Trimmer, on the other hand, was awful. There were more times that I could not cut through a single sheet of Bazzil cardstock that those that I could. It could not cut through glossy photo paper from my inkjet printer without mutilating the edges and ruining my pictures. The only time I could ever get a clean cut from the Fiskars Rotary Trimmer was when I would cut through paper as light as typing paper, and even then I had to apply so much pressure to the blade that my hands would cramp. Considering the popularity of heavyweight papers in scrapbooking with companies like Basic Grey, My Mind’s Eye and Crate Paper all printing on thicker stock, my Fiskars Rotary Trimmer is pretty much useless to me.
With my altered art projects, there are times when I need my paper cut to very specific lengths and widths, at least as precise to the eighth of an inch. I had always received decent precision with my Fiskars Euro Trimmer, but I would occasionally be off by a sixteenth of an inch or so, sometimes as much as an eighth, especially with wear and tear to the track after using it so frequently, some of it my own fault. I was hoping that the Fiskars Rotary Trimmer would be more precise than the Fiskars Euro Trimmer, however I found the opposite to be true. It is very difficult to line up your papers on the Fiskars Rotary Trimmer, and then, once aligned, they frequently slip and slide around. It was next to impossible to hold the paper in place using the Fiskars Rotary Trimmer and put enough pressure on the blade to get it to cut. My paper cuts on my Euro Trimmer would sometimes be a bit off, but on my Fiskars Rotary Trimmer there could be as much as a quarter inch difference in the width of the paper from the top of the cut to the bottom.
My Final Impression
I thought that by spending more money on my Fiskars Rotary Trimmer I would be getting a better paper trimmer all around, but I found the opposite to be true. After two months of my Fiskars Rotary Trimmer ruining my paper craft projects I finally went out and bought another Fiskars Euro Trimmer. I’ll never buy a Fiskars Rotary Trimmer again.
