Originally published at: Plastic razor blades are bad for shaving, but they have their uses | Boing Boing
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These are invaluable for removing bumper stickers and leaving the paint in relatively good condition.
P.S. I made them from old credit cards or spent gift cards by filing them down on a sharpening stone.
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reuse, recycle, renew!
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Just what we need, more plastic waste. I use steel blades, when they’re dull I sharpen them, when they’re damaged I draw them across a file once or twice to remove the edge then into the recycle bin
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So, credit cards that can bleed you in more ways than one!
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I used to use the long edges of cassette tape cases for this sort of thing.
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I use plastic putty knives for this purpose. But I would love to know if these plastic razor blades are made of a better plastic, perhaps nylon like a guitar picks are made out of, as opposed to the plastic that the putty knives are made out of which is a little softer and less durable than I’d like.
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Don’t know why people jump straight to GooGone when trying to soften an unknown adhesive. The order to try solvents in is: water, soapy water, vegetable oil, alcohol, acetone, kerosene (basically Goo Gone)/paint thinner, xylene/toluene.
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~15 years ago, our company saw fit to force techs/mechs at our division to ditch their steel blades (exacta; single edge) for plastic blades. Reason: Safety. There was a not quite silent revolt, with the biggest complaints coming from the techs who worked with strain gages; you need very sharp blades for that kind of work. The plastic blades were for shit and were just not working out. It was a disaster, and it got to the point where fed-up test/development engineers would conspire with the touch-labor people: “shop-floor” unauthorized authorizations (whispered) were given for steel blades on a case-by-case basis. Management? Some knew what was going on, stayed silent, and empowered the underground rebellion with a nod and a wink… and a level of plausible deniability to cover their own sorry asses. What a charade. It went on for months. The comedy was finally ended when the plastic blade problem began annoying influential research fellows whose pet projects were being slowed down. Plastic blades. Right.
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Let me know when they make something that is as good as a fingernail. Fingernails seem to be the best at scraping without the risk of cutting and gouging. A nail that size would be amazing.
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This. When I need to remove a sticker cleanly, vegetable oil works 99% of the time.
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Most of the orange ones seem to be acetal (e.g. delrin), which should be quite a bit harder than polypropylene putty knives. Yellow or blue ones can be polycarbonate or acrylic, both of which are harder still.
I usually use pieces of acrylic (e.g. perspex, lucite), as you can get a nice sharp edge if you score and break it.
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Guitar picks are good for a lot of non-gouging scraping jobs.
The downside is they are awfully easy to lose, unlike your nails.
I’m all for trying something out to see if it’s better/worse, once the verdict is in though, that’s it, stick with it or move on.
There’s nothing that says that you can’t keep looking for alternatives either, especially if the current alternatives are lousy.
The ice scrapers of choice for me and my friends in the early 90s northern Maine 
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