This is my version of the Arthur Smith/Adolf Haas rubber stripper, photos of which were circulated in March, 2003 by Neil McLeod of Australia via the Free Flight Mailing List. Long ago I had heard about the KISS principle(Keep It Simple Stupid), and I apply it to many situations, and here was a chance again to go with simplicity. Their stripper required working with metal which I might have been able to do, but it immediately occurred to me that a simpler version could be devised based on the same principles. That change would be to do away with the top cover and make the top a curved surface rather than flat , the idea being that, with this modification, the rubber would remain in contact with stripper while being pulled through. Equally important, for a homemade product, the construction could be of easily workable materials, such as wood and plastic sheet. I made two of these strippers, that is, I built the second one using some parts of the first one.
The first attempts at stripping rubber were not very good, which is pretty normal for a prototype. The edges of the rubber had a wavy appearance, not just in appearance, but were wavy. I concluded that drag was possibly the cause, and to correct that, I narrowed the end of the blade to about 1/8"(3mm). That made all the difference, and now the cuts were much, much better. There still seemed to be too much drag however and I tried different solutions, finally settling on Baby Powder(talcum powder) as a lubricant. I started stripping some rubber and finally had to stop because I still needed to keep some wider strip! It worked beautifully. I don't pretend that this is in the same class as a precision stripper selling for $150 or more, but I believe it can be quite effective with some practice. I imagine the expensive strippers also require a knowledgeable operator.