What tools do you use
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What tools do you use
I sell the boards with the fingers attached unless it's a much smaller board and the fingers are normal sized. But, if your heart is set on cutting them off, I use a pair of pliers to break them off then a pair of metal shears to trim the green parts off. You want to get a quality trim without any green or most buyers will downgrade them.
Based on ewasted's prices i would sell the larger/heaviest finger cards intact and trim the fingers off the smaller ones to get paid the most. I am thinking a vise and an angle grinder with a cut off wheel. Half face respirator and mono-goggles/face shield.
scroll saw but I leave them on all the cards.
Tin snips might be easier you just have to have the right amount of muscle
For fingers good clean there are several ways here are a few brake them off with wide jawed welders clamp, tin snips work well,my method i were a dust mask for safety and use a tile saw with water works better than anything i found . Or old reliable large paper cutter. Hope this helps. By the way you can get cheap tile saw for about $59.00 dollars.
Scroll saw
ive been having good luck with tin snips, youd get a better cut with a power tool but theres gonna be alot more dust stirred up so its a tradeoff
When I first started recovering and refining I was snapping off my own gold fingers. I tried many different ways of doing this, like using a table saw, which by the way is not a good way to do fingerboards at all because of the dust and all the toxins it contains, not even with proper ventilation and suction would I recommend this method.
A few other things I attempted were:
Old paper cutters with the big cast iron cutter that has a steel blade, it works but not super well.
Side cutter, same issue as a table saw
Sheet metal break, works but it's hard to get it just right with all the electronic components
Honestly, in all the different ways I tried, the ultimate best was to simply take a 2x4 or 2x6, cut a slot in it with a table saw, across the grain (cut across the grain because if you try to snap off the fingers with the grain of the wood, the wood will eventually break at the grain) You can make several cuts at different depths, far enough apart that you are not going to break the area between, so you have different sizes for different length finger boards. You feed the board into the slot and then snap off the fingerboard part.
I even went so far as to make a contraption that could be sat on to provide weight, then you feed the card into the slot, lean forward using your weight and the fingerboard snaps right off.
You can do hundreds in a relatively short amount of time...
Scott