Score Rips and Cut String One-Handed With a Utility Knife's Notches

The Problem

A $300 pocket knife is too precious to use — the creator's words, having bought several — and dull blades stay in service because sharpening is a chore. The folding work knife solves the economics (replaceable blades run pennies each), and its body carries task features a plain blade doesn't have.

The Techniques

Cut string without opening the knife. The body has a notch that shears a stretched string line on contact — twice over on some models, one notch closed and another revealed when flipped open. String lines get cut dozens of times a day on a framing site; this is the one-second version.

Score a rip with the tape-hook notch. Beside the blade sits a small notch sized for a tape measure's hook:

1. Hook the tape's end blade into the notch.
2. Hold the tape body at your rip width — say 6".
3. Pull both down the board together: the tape rides the edge as the fence, and the blade scores a parallel line the full length.

For drywall that scored line is the cut; for sheet goods it's a dead- straight layout line with no chalk involved.