For those of you who like to use paracord, here’s a cheap, easy way to get professional looking ends on your cords: build a hot wire knife. These are basic instructions, not a full tutorial.

Here’s what you need:

Nichrome wire. A lot of vape shops sell this, or you can buy it on Amazon. If you have a broken hair dryer, you can extract the heating wire from that too. I like 28 gauge. Thicker wire is harder to heat because you need a high current, low voltage power supply.


With a power supply and some gator clips. You will need to push a couple of amperes through the wire to get it hot. The voltage needed depends on the length of the heating wire. The wire should be right at the edge of glowing a dull red. 6 inches of 28 gauge wire will cut with around 3.3V at 2.5A. Here’s a cheap adjustable supply if you need one:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0781JC2WK/ref=ya_aw_od_pi?ie=UTF8&psc=1

A frame. It should be wood or plastic. Add two metal arms and use a nut to fix the heater wire to the arms. Any flat pieces of steel or aluminum are fine for the arms.

It may take some tweaking, and if the wire is thin, it will cool off as it cuts, so it’s best to drag the cord across the wire so it’s always touching a hot part of the wire.

See pictures below of my “trash knife” and the results of a cut.