I was referring to the long ones with the grooves as shown in Stan's picture above. I have a bunch of those in the vertical style.
The dupont crimp kits would be good to eliminate soldering, I might just get one of those! I have several lengths of the pre-made 'dupont cables' in all combinations of male to female that I use quite a bit for bread boarding. I hadn't thought of getting one of the kits before for the other stuff I use the pin headers for? I'm a little slow, but I usually catch on after a while...
Those female machine pin headers GRJ shows look a lot better for separating than the ones I have. I didn't know what those were called until just now! Thank you GRJ! Just might have to get some of those too. Sacrificing a pin sounds good too. You can pull the pin where you want to cut making it easier, then I wouldn't have to worry about salvaging it with the 'liquid' electrical tape. 
Another thing I have found pretty handy is a jumper with a male pin header on one end and an alligator clip on the other. Lots of other combinations of this type too.
