How To Sharpen Scissors Like A Pro

hey y'all I'm James Wright and welcome to my shop today I want to talk about sharpening scissors yes every workshop needs a pair of good scissors or shears and today I want to look at how do you maintenance them and how do you sharpen them up let's dive in this is actually a topic that I have been wanting to make for years and every time I get down to the point where I want to actually go and make how do I sharpen scissors I do something else but this is something that is very important to most workshops not only do you use scissors for cutting fabric and other things around the house in the shop I often do a lot of things of working with thin veneers or even for cutting paper out where I may be making a design or a pattern that I want to do some carving on I'm usually grabbing my scissors two to three times a week and using them for some pretty odd things but that being said they're a tool that most people don't think too much of because everyone has a pair of scissors and they're disposable right you buy pair scissors and they stop working is there money to get new ones well no a good pair of scissors can be an amazing thing and I want to take a look at that so these are the two pair of scissors that I have in my shop these are Fiskars scissors that I've had for I don't know how long I probably bought these when I was in college and they were decent scissors and they worked pretty well now they're plastic handles they they they don't feel quite as nice as a really nice pair of old shears and these are a pair of Compton you set that I picked up with a box lot with a bunch of other things and I used to use these when I did a lot of fiberglass work and I would beat these up like crazy and I got epoxy all over them but as long as you maintenance them and keep going with them they actually still work really really well so both of these have gotten a bit dull and so I want to actually sharpen them and show you what I'm looking for now when I check for sharpness I want to make sure I get a nice clean cut all the way from one end to the other all the way to the tip and I get a slice all the way across there also I want to see if I can get them to cut without slicing I want to just hold them there and slide the paper through in this case I'm getting a Terra same thing with this one on this one I can get a nice clean cut all the way from one side the other but it's not going to slide it's a little bit better than the other one but not by much so we need to work on that the other thing I'm looking for is a slop in the scissors there should be little bit of slop when they're crossed like this but by about this point that slop should be gone and they should be touching each other all the way down this one has slop all the way down to rib out here and then at that point they're actually touching and a little sheer all the way off so I want to see if I can get rid of a little bit more slop in this these ones are pretty good there there's a little bit of slop here but by the time I get them here they're touching and there's nothing slopping in them and I'm getting a nice contact all the way down basically the way they do that is the two shears are bent past each other so as they slide there's always something contacting and they share across so just as with a chisel a sharp point is just two faces of Steel coming together to meet we have our back of the channel and then we have our bevel on shears or scissors the exact same thing we have the back of the shear and then we have the bevel on here now with a chisel the bevel may be 2025 or sometimes 15 degrees with these it's usually at like 80 degrees so basically a 10 degree cut on the back here I have seen some people with the screw design actually take them apart to do the sharpening I leave them together I find that to be just a little bit simpler it's one less step in the process so for the actual sharpening I'm going to grab a diamond plate that I have this is a roughly 1200 grit diamond plate though grits and diamonds don't equate to grits and other things if you have a whetstone or sandpaper on a hard surface those weren't perfectly fine so I'm just going to hit this with a little bit of wet and then bring the scissors over and hit the back it doesn't take much at all just a few strokes and you start to see this little black stuff coming out that's actually the steel being removed from these shears so just like that we can flip it over and you can see the shiny area running all the way down the edge here that's the cutting edge on the back here you may see some shiny as well when they initially grind this they cut with a hollow in there a hollow grind on there makes it easy so you just have to remove a little bit of material so you can see the shininess all along the cutting edge now these have been sharpened quite a few times and because of that the shininess isn't right along the edge it's starting to draw back a little ways along there and the more you sharpen it the farther it'll come back along with blade so now that I've done this side we're gonna flip it over do the same thing on this side now with the chisel I do not always hit the back I really only hit that if I have a problem or a nick to come out with and the same thing with the scissors I don't all always at the back but if ever there's any junk on the back or if there's been some nick in the blade or if there's some other issues that I'm gonna hit the back and I'm probably going to hit the back every time because I only sharpen the scissors once a year maybe that and now that we've hit the back on these we need to do the bevel I've seen some people who would take the diamond plate and just do the same thing all the way across here or with their whetstone I actually prefer to do it the file I find it gives me a little bit more of a consistent surface all the way along that bevel so what I have here is one of the two jaws in a vise here I'm gonna grab my file and I'm going to draw file it from the back here all the way to the front what draw file means you're just going to drag it along and with a little bit of movement from side to side so we're gonna try here starting out by the tip and as we move we're gonna end up back over here like this you can see I'm using the edge of my vise here as a checked is to keep it at the same angle all the way across and after a few passes like that you start to see the shininess coming right along the edge except for right down here the tip I need to do a little more work and just like that I've got a nice edge on there and before I go any farther I'm actually gonna grab this little diamond paddle and this will just smooth out a little bit and give me a nice clean edge all the way across there I find that the diamond paddle really does a good job of giving that planishing touch on there so you get that extra sharp edge then we can flip it over and do the same thing on the other side now as a diamond paddle needed no man it makes it shine get that really nice edge on there so after that minute and a half of work we can take it for a test put it in here do a little slice and then on top of that it cuts all the way from back all the way into the tip the last thing I want to do is remove just that little bit of slop in this and so I can do this one just with the screw here give it a tiny little crank not much just a little bit yeah that one actually took a little bit too much it's binding up right here I'm gonna take just a hair off of that just like that that's I'm looking for it right there oh it feels good now we get a really nice clean cut very very quickly very very easily from end to end with a nice slide all the way down the piece now that's a really nice pair of scissors that will last me for years and years and years to come some scissors don't have the screws they actually have a rivet on there and so you can put a handle on one side or a hammerhead on one side and then you have to strike the other side and tap it down to tighten it up a little bit and sometimes you have to do that if you remove too much material off of the face of the scissor you need to bring these together a little bit better so that they will slide all the across it is amazing what a good pair of scissors can do and the difference between a decently sharp pair of scissors and a really nice sharp person is we can slide all that across the paper it makes things really really happy now if you want to see it links to what I use I'll have those down in the description below you don't have to use diamonds I just like them they give that little extra clean sharpen on their files work just perfectly just understand you have to do a little bit more time to get that perfectly clean edge on there I'm sure this has brought up a few other questions feel free to let me know the questions down below and I'll try and get to as many of those as I can also if you did like the video please hit like comment share subscribe ring the bell become a patron click the join button all those things really do help out the channel and thank you for that anything there really does make a difference and that helps a lot so I think that's about it for now and until next time have a wonderful day some people have asked me why I like working from home and well I did try to find a regular job at the last interview I was at the interviewer asked me so we're looking for someone who's responsible do you fit that bill and my response was well at my last job the building burnt down and my employer did say I was responsible

Channel: Wood By Wright

Views: 790,369

Rating: 4.84375 out of 5

Keywords: sharpen, scissors, sharpening scissors, how to sharpen scissors at home, sharpen scissors, how to sharpen scissors, Wood By Wright, Handtools, Hand tool, Hand Tools, Hand plane, how to, do it yourself, sharpener, diy, how to sharpen hair scissors, how to sharpen a pair of scissors, sharpening your scissors, dull, fabric scissors, scissors sharpener, Shears, scissor sharpening, how to sharpen shears, how to sharpen, scissors sharpening, fiskars scissors, sharp scissors

Id: i1Wy9O7lwYI

Length: 8min 22sec (502 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 15 2019