wizard blades

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Bob Carter

Bob Carter

SPFG, Supreme Picture Framing God
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Does anyone that owns a Wiz have an alternate source for blades. Appreciate your help
 
Bob, We have been getting blades from Superior Moulding in Minneapolis. They also have just come out with a new improved version and it outlasts the original wizard blade tremendously. I would suggest you give them a try. P.S. they also have a great line of moulding.
Accent
 
Bob, Is the cost an issue? It was for me initially but I discovered we use fewer blades on the Wizard than we did on our manual mat cutters and as a result we spend alot less money on blades with the Wizard. The Blades may cost 75.00 box but we only go thru a box every 6 months, and our machine is running alot. We only use 2-3 blades a day (during a busy day). The manual mat cutters were going thru blades every few matboards.
If cost is the issue, bite the bullet and go on. I've been there, done that.
 
Thanks for the replies. Cost is always an issue with us. It seemed like we were going through blades like Sherman through Georgia. But it appears that we doing as well as expected. Appreciate the help.
 
Bob! I'm not joking. If you are going through blades faster than you think reasonable or economical there may be another issue. First, your "old-timers" trained using a manual cutter may be changing blades more frequently than necessary out of habit. Your stores may be using a lot of fabric covered mats which tend to dull blades faster than paper. I have also found "regular paper mats" tend to dull blades alittle faster than conservation grade mats. And the last option that comes to mind is 'theft.' They are nice blades that fit well into exacto knives. We use our old blades for our exacto knives after the wizard is done with them.
I have experimented with the wizard blades and you can go thru about 30 mats plus or minus before changing a blade.
 
Thanks for the tip, Greg. We do a lot of fabric-that might be it.
 
Perhaps your looking at it wrong.
What does one blade cost?
What does a sheet of matboard cost?
What do you sell your smallest mat for?
Is it worth the risk of cutting a bad mat with a dull blade?
If you used a brand new blade for each mat you cut, you would still be way ahead of the game. Sometimes in our efforts to cut costs we end up spending more than we would have, had we just left it alone.
Wizard sells a more expensive blade,$100.00 per box. We switched over to those about a year ago. They seem to last longer and cut a better mat.
Give those a try, you may end up spending less overall.

John
 
There is a new premium blade available for the Wizard and Eclipse matcutters,it also may fit other brands. These are cutting far longer than the standard blades. They cost 36.00 per hundred from Superior Moulding in Minneapolis. They also offer your money back if you are not satisfied with the blades. Item number is ABEP,phone #is 800-922-7914. Give them a try, we are very happy with them.

Accent
 
500 blades @ .15 each = 6 average mats cut = 2.5 cents per mat who cares. I might get more mats but one bad mat due to a blades cost about 6 dollars plus wasted time. No contest.

framer

I have not tried the new blades but plan to as my supply gets low.
 
I had read something on the Hitchhiker forum about the premium blades which Wizard had, that they were well worth the extra cost, which, as pointed out above, wasn't much. When we put in the Wiz, I ordered a couple of boxes of those and have been using them from the start with no complaints (other than we've not really figured out the suedes yet, but we're learning on it). We probably use way too many blades because we're being conservative with it.

The Superior blades certainly sound cost-effective and we'll look into that when we get low. The original blades we got are just sitting around as kind of an emergency backup group of blades.
 
Some are getting hung up on the cost issue. While cost is important to us, my original post was, and still is, is there another source than Wizard for blades. I just don't want only one source for anything. In light of the problems at Imat and their bankruptcy, I thought it wise to ask this collective body for help.

It is fun, however, to watch some of the responses that read too much into a query
 
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