Another way to split a Duo-Art expression box emerged at the 1979 AMICA
Convention in Philadelphia.  John Grant gave us a startling demon-
stration of splitting a grand box with a hammer.  The technique was
documented in the December 1979 issue of the AMICA Bulletin and again
in Technicalities IV.

Very briefly, he placed a folded-up towel on the concrete floor,
placed the gutted box on the towel, and using a wood block and a
courageous, mighty hammer blow, split the box open cleanly.  I've used
the technique myself since then equally successfully.  To paraphrase
briefly from John's article:

"Freeze the gutted box to ensure the glue is as brittle as possible.
Through a wood block, strike a solid hammer blow against the inner
surface of the bottom half of the box.  The box is forced downward
with an acceleration force of from 200 to 300 G's, but only for an
instant, and only for a fractional distance.  The bottom half of the
box tries to pull the top half down with it, but the glue joint fails
first."

He also tried the same technique successfully without first freezing
the box.  I've only done it after an overnight soak in my deep
freeze.

Enjoy!

Terry Smythe