Crop-a-Dile; Review

Welcome Back
After a lot of deliberation, I finally bought a Crop-a-dile (back in March) by We R Memory Keepers.

It took me a long time to give one of these a try as I have R.S.I and I truly didn’t think I would have the hand strength to use this tool. I joined in a Book Swap on the Stamping Mad forum, the theme was Oriental and we were to bind the finished book using Japanese stab stitch. Well using mount board for the cover boards and the only way of making holes I had, eg hammer and hole punching tool, took over 20 hits per hole. Needless to say after one hole I was in so much pain I gave up.  After chatting with the others on the forum, who had used this tool everyone assured me that it was marvellous and that you wouldn’t need strong man muscles to use one, so I invested.

This tool is fantastic! Really you must buy one. If you need to punch holes in anything other than VERY thin card save yourself a LOT of time and trouble and use a Crop-a-dile.  It uses its own leavers to increase the small amount of pressure you need to pull the handles towards each other and bites through all sorts of things. Mount board was a breeze to punch through book board (Davey board/grey board) was hardly more difficult. If you want to set an eyelet, you simply rotate a pair of cubes on the tool and gently squeeze and the eye let is set. If you can squeeze a ketchup bottle you can use a Crop-a-dile. One word of warning, before you open the tool hide anything you don’t want to punch holes in. You will be so surprised at how easy it is to use, that you will go round the house punching holes in stuff just to see if it can do it. (We all did)

One word of warning the screws that you loosen to adjust how far across the page you want your hole punched ARE VERY SHORT! The first time you adjust the screw, make sure you hold the tool over the table or you are likely to lose the screw on the floor. Once you have undone it once, you will know how little to undo the screw to enable the bar to move.

The card ‘stick’ points to the screws in question.
DON’T rip the back off the package when you open your Crop-a-dile. On the back of the packaging are the instructions for the combinations that you set the small cubes to when you want to set eyelets. You will want to keep this to refer to for later use. I think the company may have been better to include a paper copy of this in with the tool. If you have killed your instructions, go to the manufactures website and you can download another copy. https://weronthenet.com/products/newproducts.shtml?crop-a-dile

I don’t have any negatives about this tool, it does what it says on the tin, and it does it well. The Crop A Dile is well made and solid, one of my all time favourite tools. I have not used my hammer and tool to punch a hole or set an eyelet since. Don’t throw those away though, as unless you buy the Crop A Dile’s big brother called ‘The Big Bite’ you can only punch hole or set eyelets 1” into your page.

Links

This is the link to the Manufacturers site We R Memory Keepers. https://weronthenet.com/index.shtml

Here is a link to a really great demonstration on You Tube by Mad Scrapper Girl, explaining how to use the Crop-a-dile.  http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=wyHffZ-e0Xc

If you want to know all about the Crop-A-Dile’s big brother the Big Bite here is a video about it http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=uscFiPDbcmY&feature=related

Here is a side by side comparison of the two tools http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=e2_e0999hWA&feature=related

Thanks for reading and if you have any questions just leave me a comment
Billie 🙂

**Update**

First link updated Feb 2013.

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