For the papercutting artist, one of the first tools they might work with is an X-Acto Knife. Although the classic X-Acto Knife only comes with one blade, you can purchase sets of X-Acto Knife blades that screw into your knife handle and allow for a range of cutting styles and abilities. Blade shapes come in various sizes and angles of square, curved and triangular. Having a sharp X-Acto Knife is essential to getting the delicate edges required in papercutting, and blades should be tested for sharpness and replaced regularly.
Like X-Acto Knives, the papercutting artist is likely to start out with one pair of scissors and later discover the huge variety of scissor types on the market. Scissors generally have different types of blades depending on their intended use. You can purchase scissors for fringing with multiple blades, pinking shears that have a zig-zag blade and a variety of die-cut scissors with different blade patterns for doing decorative edge cuts such as the types found in scrapbooks.
Tear bars are a type of cutting tool commonly used in printmaking to create a deckle (uneven or slightly imperfect) edge. Tear bars are heavy, often stainless steel flat bars that look similar to a large ruler. They have one square and one beveled edge that is used to tear the paper. The tear bar is placed on the back of a piece of heavyweight paper, and the paper is pulled against the beveled edge to create the cut.
Paper trimmers are large guillotine-style paper cutting devices that consist of a flat table on which to line up the paper and a hinged blade that can be used to trim the paper down. Paper trimmers don't offer the delicacy or accuracy of other artistic paper cutting tools, but they are useful for trimming down large quantities of paper at once. Like all paper cutting tools, the efficacy of paper trimmers depends on a well -sharpened blade.