Abstract: Prior to the bonding of precious metal ribbon to flat base metal strips useful for the fabricating of electrical contacts, grooves are skived into the surface of the metal strip to receive the precious metal ribbon. The apparatus disclosed is capable of skiving grooves of a predetermined depth in a flat metal strip, thereby avoiding the wastage of precious metal ribbon which occurs when such grooves are cut too shallowly or too deeply. In a preferred embodiments, an indexing wheel follows the surface of the metal strip and cutters adjusted to maintain a fixed spaced relation to the indexing wheel skive grooves of predetermined constant depth.In another embodiment, a method of installing precious metal ribbon within grooves skived into metal strips is disclosed which comprises controlling the depth of such grooves by use of the principles and apparatus of the invention.