At which angles do you sharpen your scissors?
- This topic has 21 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 08/16/2019 at 1:48 pm by
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I’ve done about 12-15 pairs so far, and I’m pretty sure they’ve all been different. Eight of them have been a batch from a single owner and it did strike me as being odd. The differences were huge, like from about 55 degrees to a solid 90. The owner is a doctor and her bandage cutting scissor was the 90 degree job.
BTW, the scissor adapter won’t give you a 90 angle, as it requires that the ball joint be well into the vise base. I had to adjust for the lowest possible angle – which of course I didn’t record.
That does tell me that I ought to record the angles just for my own curiosity.
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Google is your friend…
I tried to Google “scissor sharpening angle”, and very little information turned up.
However, sharpeningmadeeasy.com gave some real information. I’ve taken the liberty of quoting the most relevant paragraphs here:
SCISSOR SHARPENING Scissor angles are measured from square, which is called 0 degrees.
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Some scissors, like children's safety scissors or pinking shears, will be ground square.
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Paper cutting and older cast scissors will be ground at between 5 and 15 degrees, leaving an acute angle at the edge
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In newer scissors this angle increases up to 25 - 35 degrees or so, but some scissors are deceptive.
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The highest angle found in household scissors will be 40 or 45 degrees. This is found on the finger blade of knife edge dressmaking shears, although the thumb blade may be at a lower angle, usually 15 degrees.
Always look carefully for the steepest cutting bevel and duplicate it. Grinding the other way and leaving an obtuse edge, called a negative angle, is bad.
You may see this on low quality scissors or after poor sharpening jobs. Some general angles by usage
Children's safety scissors 0 Pinking shears 0 - 5 Cast Iron paper scissors 5 - 15 Bandage scissors 20 Grass and hedge trimmers 25 Embroidery, cuticle, nail scissors 25 - 30 Fabric, tailor and industrial shears 7" and longer 35 - 40 Knife edge finger blade (thumb blade is 15 - 20 degrees) 45 - 50
Various scissor and shear sharpening bevel angles.
Clayton 7" 10 Wiss thread nippers 10 Gingher thread snips 15 Italian pinking shears 15 Old Wiss pinking shears 15 Kleencut 20 Fiskars dressmaker 30 Gingher snips resharpened 35 Delica 3 1/2" blade desk scissors 40 Gingher "Knife Edge" dressmaker 15-45 Wiss dressmaker 25-30 Wusthof kitchen shears 25-35 DaVinci 2 1/2" blade 30-45 Japanese kitchen shears 35-404 users thanked author for this post.
Try just holding the scissors in you fingers to orient the bevel in a position relative to the sharpening stone. Move the hand held scissors in relation to the paddle. Flip the scissors over and all around till you find a position that allows you to work with them. Lay the stone against the scissor edge while you hold the scissors in your hand, so you can see how the scissors need to be positioned, so you have adjustment range with the guide rods. Then work with the adapter to position it in the vise jaws so it will hold the scissors where you had them positioned when holding them in your fingers. There are really a lot of combinations between scissor position and adapter position to work with.
Also the bevels on some scissors are not flat but may be concave. For those scissors I just try to smooth and flatten the leading edge where the two scissor sides meet and never work on the rest of the edge, at all. Scissors cut by the preciseness of the meeting of the edges the two scissor sides. None of the rest of the bevel has any function.
Marc
(MarcH's Rack-Its)2 users thanked author for this post.
These were made by Kenchii which I had never heard of but I guess they’re high dollar. The first one I pulled out was curved! I was thinking oh man, I’m in trouble. Each one sells at close to $300 according to their website.
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