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Sewing Scissors |
Sectional view of the cutting blade
Scissor parts
Scissors are sharpened according to the angles shown below.
Unless the scissors need to have a really honed edge, honing is not recommended for scissors. Stop after the sharpening step (but with a high grit level - 1,000 or so).
Some scissors have differing angles for the Thumb Blade (shown in red on the picture below) vs. the Fingers Blade (shown in blue on the picture below). In those cases, separate angles are shown in the table below.
Beautiful things come together one stitch at a time. Anonymous |
The picture to the right shows a sectional view of the cutting blade.
General Guidelines |
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Type |
βThumb | βFingers |
Notes |
---|---|---|---|
General Scissors | 120° | ||
Clayton 7” | 110° | ||
DaVinci - 21/2” blade | 120° | 135° | |
Delica - 31/2” blade desk scissors | 130° | ||
Embroidery scissors | 115 - 120° | ||
Fabric shears, ≥ 7” | 125 - 130° | ||
Fiskars dressmaker | 120° | ||
Gingher 'Knife Edge' dressmaker | 115° | 135° | |
Gingher snips resharpened | 125° | ||
Gingher thread snips | 105° | ||
Industrial shears, ≥ 7” | 125 - 130° | ||
Italian pinking shears | 105° | ||
Kleencut | 110° | ||
Pinking shears | 90 - 95° | ||
Tailor shears, ≥ 7” | 125 - 130° | ||
Wiss dressmaker | 115° | 120° | |
Wiss pinking shears, old style | 105° | ||
Wiss thread nippers | 100° |
The Tormek SVX-150 Scissors jig is the best to use for these.
When sharpening scissors, use the vertical position with the grindstone rotating towards the blade. This keeps the SVX-150 properly aligned to the grindstone. (If you use the horizontal position, the grindstone will pull the scissors away from the jig.)
However, if you are sharpening left-handed scissors and they cannot be disassembled into the two pieces, you will need to sharpen from the horizontal position as the piece not being sharpened would interfere with the process otherwise (it would hit the Tormek machine).
Use of diamond grinding wheels is not recommended. The sharpness of the angle for sharpening can damage the diamiond wheel. (And the SG grindstone works quite well.)