sharpening scissors

[Bill Wright]

Why doesn't it work?

Bill

[Simon Mason]

Thanks for the prompt - just bought these.

[harry]

Scissor blades are twisted, curved, bent and often hollow ground. All need to be right for them to work correctly.

[tim...]

because scissors work by having the gap between the blades, along the full length of the blades as as close to zero as possible

when worn out, sharpening each blade individually will make that gap bigger, not smaller

tim

[Brian Gaff]

You need to sharpen the side awayfrom the parts that slide and also make sure the parts that slide slide without any gaps. Many cheap scissors are made of such rubbish material and are mechanically poor that its better to bin them and get some new ones. Brian

[Huge]

Not if you sharpen them correctly.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Then you don't sharpen both 'sides' of the blade. Like you'd do with a knife.

>

[Tim Lamb]

Also the user applies force when cutting to bring the blade edges close. Think why left and right handed scissors:-)

[tim...]

well obviously

you need a special tool to sharpen them in parallel

sticking each one on a grinding wheel/pad separately, ain't gonna work

tim

[GB]

I remember that my kids' primary school decided to raise some money by doing odd jobs,including knife sharpening. I remember that there was some talk about them ruining some scissors.

Having said that, don't all scissor blades have an inside and an outside edge? The inside edge being where the two blades meet, and the outside edge being the bevelled part of that edge. Can't you sharpen the bevelled outside edge without any special tools?

I really couldn't think of a better way to explain that! :)

[Cash]

Yep, a hand powered and controlled simple flat file is the "special tool" - or even a stone, flat sharpening slip matched with a touch of oil - see

Caash

Cash

[0345.86.86.888]

Big scissors AKA garden shears are easy to sharpen. Grind at 90 degrees to a grinding wheel and the wheel i.e. inside face of the blades flat against the grinding face of the wheel, will give a a hollow ground finish. The final adjustment is to slightly tweak both blades in a vice so they curve towards each other and contact with just enough pressure at the point the blades meet then come away from one another as the cutting point moves further along the blades.

Scissors are just small shears are they not?

[stvlcnc43]

Simply grind off all the metal that doesn't look like part of a pair of sharp scissors!