When Greek inventor John Iliadis wanted to create a powerful cutting tool, he chose, not steel or any other metal for the blade, but paper.

Paper? Paper?

Well, if you’ve ever had a cut on your finger from the sharp edge of a page of a book, you know how effective paper can be.

So, Iliadis, who has built micro-turbine engines, portable light-bulbs and other gadgets at home using nothing but household material and, as he says on his YouTube channel, “a lot of patience”, decided to use paper.

The blade is actually nothing but a circular disc cut out of two sheets of ordinary paper pasted together. Fixed at the end of the rotating bit of a drill, it cuts through hard material with exceptional efficiency.

Hard to believe, but true, as the video above demonstrates.