How often should you sharpen your scissors/service your scissors

When you’re cutting hair everyday, you rely on your tools to make your life easier. That's why keeping your shear blades as sharp as possible and the tension at 12 o'clock, this means you won't have those dull scissors that just drags down your whole mood. If a good quality pair of scissors is what you have invested in, then it only makes sense to take real good care of them and to service those scissors right?

Well, like most hair stylists / Barbers we are a little time poor and are probably guilty of not regularly servicing our tool's so here are our “Top Tips” on how to do that, or what it looks like when taking care of your investment. You may also feel that if you invest in the best pair of scissors on the market, that will stay sharp forever and you wont need to maintain the blade. Well this is not true either, your scissors may last forever but any blade wears down after time.

Top Tips on how to care for your scissors

1. Sharpen your scissors at least twice a year. - "There's an unwritten rule in the bible of hair gods that you need to sharpen your scissors after every 700th haircut, so you do the math really on how often you think yours need sharpening".
2. Invest in a scissor case so you can protect those scissors from being dropped
3. learn how to properly check the tension of your scissor, check out this YouTube link to see how to do that. How to tighten your hairdressing shears
4. Only let a trained scissor sharpener handle your sharpening. An in-experienced sharper can break your scissors or cause damage to the color of your shears, if you have a beautiful colored pair of scissors that is.
5. Oil your scissors either every day or at least once a week including the screw. Lightly oil your scissor blades every couple of days and wipe away any dirt or hair.
6. Don't ever leave your scissors in the steriliser to soak, simply spray the steriliser if you have to and always wipe off any residue straight away after using them. Not doing this can break down the steel and damage them over a period of time.
   
   
   

Do not do

When we say to only let a professional scissor sharpener sharpen your scissors, we do mean only a specialist and not a knife sharpener. The difference between a professional scissor sharpener and a knife sharpener is that they use different machines to sharpen your shears. So unless that knife sharpener has two different machines and offers 2 different services, by choosing this service you run the risk of them breaking your scissors.

Sharpening yourself? You may come across some “how to’s” online on sharpening your own scissors.. not only is it dangerous to do so, please resist this urge and put down those shears! you should never do this. Scissors are not like knives where you can potentially self sharpen at home. Scissor sharpening needs to be done by a professional.

Conclusion

So depending on the quality of scissors you have invested in, your higher grade Japanese steel should stay sharper for longer, but that all depends on how often you use your shear. Even with the highest quality steel you need to sharpen those scissors before they start to feel blunt.

Any nicks in your scissors from dropping them can be sharpened out (depending if you did a really good job dropping them or not). Don't "drop it like it's hot", hold onto those scissors for dear life because they can break.

So you can see now there's so much more to just sharpening those scissors, the servicing of them too requires a lot of care and attention from your part.