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thistlechaserThe friendly FedEx man knocked at my door bright and early this morning to bring me my new hot knife. Hot machete is more like it!
I'm really not a toolsy person, the first hot knife I had was nice and small and I was comfortable with it, but the heavy duty one? Eeek! I read the manual from cover to cover (all seven pages!) and set about to work.
Good thing it was early, or people would have been out and about and noticed the smoke. Such a good idea to do it outside, would have been an impossible task inside. The smoke SMELLED horrible. Gah. Had that bad "house fire" sort of smell, not a nice clean smoke.
The hot knife worked semi-well. Took a lot longer than I had hoped, maybe a half-hour to cut the whole thing. Luckily there was a wind to blow the smoke away, but my patio is fenced in, so it also swirled it around more than I would have liked.
There were lots of spider web-like threads floating around in the air (plastic that melted and stretched out). The cuts weren't as clean as I'd like them; in some places it was as smooth as glass, but in others it was jagged and sharp.
The finished box! Instead of filling it with new litter, I put the stuff from her old box in, so it'd smell right and she'd hopefully know where to go. That's my goal for how it will work, the litter will stay mostly in the far end. That's also a whole box of litter, though it doesn't look like much. Once she uses it once, I'll probably add another container of litter to it.
Because of those jagged edges left by the knife, I covered the lower edge with tape. (I could have melted them with the knife, but I had made so much smoke and stink that I just wanted to be done with that stage.) I had intended to cover the edge with duct tape, but I didn't have any (shocking!). I used clear plastic packing tape, hopefully it'll stay.
So, that's the end of the story! As I've likely given myself some sort of cancer from that horrible burning plastic smoke, I really do hope she'll like and use the box.
I'm really not a toolsy person, the first hot knife I had was nice and small and I was comfortable with it, but the heavy duty one? Eeek! I read the manual from cover to cover (all seven pages!) and set about to work.
Good thing it was early, or people would have been out and about and noticed the smoke. Such a good idea to do it outside, would have been an impossible task inside. The smoke SMELLED horrible. Gah. Had that bad "house fire" sort of smell, not a nice clean smoke.
The hot knife worked semi-well. Took a lot longer than I had hoped, maybe a half-hour to cut the whole thing. Luckily there was a wind to blow the smoke away, but my patio is fenced in, so it also swirled it around more than I would have liked.
There were lots of spider web-like threads floating around in the air (plastic that melted and stretched out). The cuts weren't as clean as I'd like them; in some places it was as smooth as glass, but in others it was jagged and sharp.
The finished box! Instead of filling it with new litter, I put the stuff from her old box in, so it'd smell right and she'd hopefully know where to go. That's my goal for how it will work, the litter will stay mostly in the far end. That's also a whole box of litter, though it doesn't look like much. Once she uses it once, I'll probably add another container of litter to it.
Because of those jagged edges left by the knife, I covered the lower edge with tape. (I could have melted them with the knife, but I had made so much smoke and stink that I just wanted to be done with that stage.) I had intended to cover the edge with duct tape, but I didn't have any (shocking!). I used clear plastic packing tape, hopefully it'll stay.
So, that's the end of the story! As I've likely given myself some sort of cancer from that horrible burning plastic smoke, I really do hope she'll like and use the box.
