I don't know why I never thought about this before, but when you unstack a buttercream cake is it just a given that half the top will come off onto the cake board that was resting on it? I'm having troubles with this, I guess I've just gotten used to fondant.

Have you tried to put a circle of parchment paper under your cakeboard? Remove your top tier and carefully peel off the parchment paper. Should be OK.

Thanks, that's a great easy idea.

No, it's not a given.

Check out my "how to cut a wedding cake pics": http://cateritsimple.com/id10.html . You can see the indentation of the separator plate (back when I used plates) that shows you the plate was sitting directly ON the cake ... but the icing stayed in place. When I switched to using just cardboards between cakes, it worked the same way.

The key is using a good crusting BC. Let it crust before final assembly. It will work fine.

Sometimes it worked out by accident that my dowels were ever so imperceptibly slightly taller than the cake (1/32" or 1/16"?) so that it had this little nano-gap and that helps, too, but I never "tried" to get that height diff ..... if I tried to cut them that way, I'd never make it!

Since I cut most of my wedding cakes (since I was usually the caterer, too) I saw firsthand how the cakes performed during the cutting process.

Never had a naked top on a cake during disassembly. Never.