Scissor Sharpening Advise-Any tips?

[carolinaman]

Hi there all,

OK, OK, OK. My wife tells me that I spent way too much time on these forums and I am searching for some "significant other" helpful advise.

You see my lovely young bride is a cosmotology student and obviously uses hair shears to practice her trade and her future profession.

However, among her less ambitious honey do's for me, she frequently asks me to sharpen her hair cutting shears at least once every two weeks. (By the way, for those of you who don't know, ask your barber or hairstylists how much those things cost! Good ones aren't cheap!)

So, does anyone have any advise or a relatively full proof method for sharpening shears?

Presently, I am using a regular Smith's ceramic sharpening fixture to sharpen them, but I was told that most shears have a micro serrated edge that aids in cutting and that when the edge is gone, the shears are done.

Thanks,

Chris

 

[hso]

The "micro serrated edge" exists on all blades. How micro depends upon how fine a stone you use. In the case of shears you don't want the finest edge that's possible on a knife. The bevel is very steep on shears and the "shearing" action is as much to do with the faces of the shears closely passing each other as the sharpness of the edge. The critical issue with shears is to not remove material so that the two faces loose contact when the cut is made. To get a good shearing edge on any blade you can achieve this by fine sharpening followed by going back to the next coarser stone. As odd as it may seem, this allows a toothy edge to be set after you've got everything nice and sharp .

If you're doing that with your hand stones then you're doing everything properly.

Of course you could use it as an excuse to get more sharpening gear and cheat and get one of the smith's electrics and use the scissors slot

 

[carolinaman]

Hso,

Thank you for the response and the advice.

It will come in handily and I have some Arkansas Sharpening stones at most disposal and will practice with my wife's least expensive pair of shears. Her most expensive are about $400.00! (I could buy another used Browning High Power for that price!)

Do the Smith Electric sharpeners work well? If I do well with it, I may get some referrals from her fellow students.

Thank you so much for the advice,

Chris

 

[ecos]

a few years back i dated a girl that worked at a hair salon and i started getting requests to sharpen scissors...there is decent money to be made there. i was surprised to learn a lot of the girls paid $20-30 for one sharpening. figure each salon had at least 5 girls working and it was a chain of like 30 salons....it adds up quickly.

when i sharpened them i used regular arkansas or silicone carbide stones(nowadays i might use worn in diamond) that were perfectly flat and i was just very carefull to hold at the proper angle. with a little practice its pretty easy since dull barber shears are usually pretty close to being sharp anyways.

 

[carolinaman]

Hi ecos,

Thank you for the reply and story and yes I believe there is money to be made in scissor sharpening as I was asked at the local Sally Beauty Supply store once if I knew of anyone that did scissor sharpening by the Manager of the store.

I did a little bit of research yesterday while prepping the Thanksgiving feast and discovered that a lot of professional scissor sharpening is accomplished with buffing wheels of various grits.

I also know that in my area there is at least one person that went to the school where my wife attends to sharpen scissors and apparently the results were not that good with his efforts. My wife complained that her shears were not much sharper after he finished with them.

The shears they use are expensive and do recieve a lot of "hard work" and are used everyday for cutting demonstrations as well as the "patrons" that come in and have their hair cut for a discounted price!

I need to do some more research and do appreciate the replies so far to "add to my knowlege base".

Is there an optimum angle for shears compared to other cutting implements?

Chris

 

[hso]

Avoid power tools unless you already know how to control them. While they speed a job up they can also speed up mistakes and ruin a good edge.

 

[mete]

Buffing wheels ? No wonder there is a problem .Sharpening is done on the edge of the blade only, not the side.It should be square with the side.Check to see that the blades make contact down the whole length of the blade as you close the blades. A professional really needs professional quality tools even though they are expensive.

 

[saltydog452]

I don't know about hair scisssors, I thought they used replacable blades.

My bride sews a lot. She doesn't know it, but whenever she mentions that her sewing scissors are getting kinda dull, I use her scisssors to shread a sheet of 1000 grit wet-or-dry sandpaper. It seems to work well for her sewing scissors.

salty.

 

[JMusic]

Carolinaman it depends on how much you enjoy this. If you don't use a grinding wheel on it, she won't ask again. Just joking. I used to sharpen my mothers, the first thing I did was to make sure the screw was tight. I stayed away from stones as much as possible and ran the edge across a piece of leather several times to make sure the entire cutting surfuse looked polished. I then did as HSO recomended and used an Arkansaw stone of medium grit lightly across the edge one or two strokes. Good luck, be careful do not roll the edge and as someone else stated never ever sharpen the back. If you screw them up many times you can send them back to the factory for sharpening.
Jim

 

[Valkman]

Get a Spyderco Sharpmaker - you can keep all your knives sharp and it does a great job on scisssors! I do the final sharpen on my knives with it so that customers can easily keep them sharp. I'm talking about regular scissors - you should get one anyway and then see if it works on the hair ones!