Andy Dingley wrote:

On Fri, 16 Dec 2005 00:38:37 GMT, Elizabeth Young
wrote:


I have tried to get my Wiss pinking shears sharpened locally.


It's pretty much impossible to sharpen pinking shears. It's not easy to
sharpen your own brand, where you can jig up to do one design over and
over, but to sharpen any old pair that comes in off the street is very
hard. Also, most pinking shears simply _can't_ be sharpened - they take
their adjustment from the pivot and so you need to dismantle them and
work on the pivots to get the set right again. If they're not
maunfactured to allow this, then it's really not practical.


Not true. The only pinkers, scissors, shears or other tyoe of cutlery
that cannot be sharpened (or at least hold a worhtwhile edge) are those
manufactured in cast steel, which has a granular property. You'll know
when you sharpen a cast pair as it breaks apart along the edge. Also,
under the pivot you can see the granular structure, which looks like sand.



On the bright side, scissors rarely need full sharpening anyway.
Generally a light honing is enough to make them cut again and as merely
honing them doesn't disturb their set, then this is an easy job. It's
entirely practical for DIY.

Get a small diamond hone on a plastic stick (DMT make good ones). Use
this, wet, to polish the top edge of the blade - the edge that contacts,
but doesn't slide over, the other blade of the scissors (i.e. not the
face). Be careful to hold the hone at the right angle and to not wobble
it (thus making a rounded surface). A few minutes work here will
generally rejuvenate most straight bladed scissors and a small hone will
even allow you to work on most pinking shears. Even with a serrated
blade, honing the non-serrated blade is worthwhile. So long as the
scissors aren't worn so badly that their set is affected, this is
usually enough to get them cutting again.

Again, this is only part of sharpening. What happens when you create the
burr and cut it off in the wrong direction upon first use ?

I receive SO MANY pairs that have been sharpened in this fashion. The
user does what you described above or uses tinfoil or sandpaper (OLD
WIVES TALE folks...). They use them a few times and they are often worse
for wear, at which point I get them and have to do more work to sharpen
them.

btw, DMT (diamond machine technology) are made down the street from me.
While they make excellent products that surpass the imported type, I
wuld not recommend a casual user in the method you described above. I've
probably sharpened over 100,000 shears and I ALWYS use a precide angle
jig that I designed. No guesswork, no returns...

The set, as you say, is only ruined when the individual teeth have been
sharpener by a well-meaning "sharpener".

Trust me, I've done this for 20 years.