The rail-cutter: a simple, cheap and compact system for opening sediment cores in the lab and field

Sediment cores are important archives for paleolimnological, paleooceanographic and paleoecologicalresearch. Rigs for splitting lake sediment cores that have been collected in PVC or polycarbonatetubes are often large, bulky, and require a permanent setup that takes up valuable laboratory space. Here we describe a new, compact, cost-effective apparatus for splitting sediment cores collected in PVC or polycarbonatetubing. This portable setup is relatively simple to construct and use, and is ideal for use in the laboratory, in the field, or on board research vessels at sea.