Hairdressing Scissor Care and Maintenance Guide

After buying your new pair of hairdressing or barber Shears, you need to know how to maintain, balance, tighten and how to take care of your scissors. 

Summary of Scissor Care and Maintenance 

Understanding the intricacies of maintaining and caring for your hairdressing and barber scissors takes time and practice.

Here we have the summary 2 minute read on how to care for and maintain scissors.

• Use your preferred tension adjusters to maintain the scissor tightness. Loose scissors tend to bend and fold hair while cutting. Scissors that are too tight will wear down the blade faster.
• Store your scissors in a dry environment away. If you are located close to the beach or ocean, protect your scissors by keeping them sealed in a plastic case.
• After each haircut you should clean your scissors. Avoid leaving hair, dirt, or water in between the blades for long periods of time. 
• Clean your scissors with a sheep-skin or fabric clothes.
• Use your Japan Scissor' oil pen to ensure the scissors are cutting smoothly without tense friction against the blades.
• For the best results, spread the oil over the scissors with the oil pen brush.
• When you notice your blades starting to become dull or blunt, refer to your local scissor sharpening professional to have your blades re-sharpened.

The biggest question around the maintenance of your scissors can be answered in the above bullet points.

To care for your scissors, always ensure that they are clean, dry and the shear blades are oiled.

For thinning scissors maintenance, remove the hair in between the teeth after cutting. If you are having difficult removing dirty or hair in between the teeth, you can use a tooth-pick or toothbrush to clean, then wash, and re-oil. 

To avoid corrosion and damage to the metal, keep these dry and sealed in a protective pouch. Hairdressing and barber shops near the beach are at risk to corrosion damage on their scissors. To avoid these, seal the dry shears in a plastic pouch, sandwich or freezer bag.

How Often Do I Need To Care and Maintain My Scissors?

Whether you are adjusting the tension, learning how to balance scissors or oiling the blade, its important to know how often it is required.

Here is our summary on how often and when you need to care for your scissors.

Scissor sharpening	Every two to Three months for professional hairdressers and barbers.
Full Scissor Oiling	Oil your shears once a month. Oil the shears by wiping away any hair or dirt, you can also use alcohol cleaner, then slowly oiling the blade and gears.
Light Scissor Oil	Oil every two to three days for professionals cutting everyday.
Cleaning Scissors	Clean your scissors once a week. Use alcohol wipes to clean the handles, blade, screw and gears to get rid of any dirt, stains or hair. Use a brush to get clean the hard to reach areas.
Tension Adjustment	Once a month, depending on your scissor screw. Ensure the two blades are tight by adjusting the tension each month.

 

How To Tighten and Adjust Scissor Tension

Having tight scissors keeps your cuts sharp and protects your blades from being damaged while cutting.

Scissors have the screws and gears to ensure the two blades are kept together during the cutting motions. Understanding the perfect tension allows you to retighten effectively. 

To adjust your tension on the hairdressing scissors, you can follow these three steps.

1. Keep your scissors closed and hold them tightly in your hand.
2. Take the tension adjuster key, or if it is a hand-tension-adjuster, just start slowy turning clockwise to tighten.
3. Once satisfied, you can hold the scissors by one finger loop on the handle and if they stay closed, then they are tight enoguh. If the shear blades open up, then you need to continue tightening them.

Top 10 Best Tips To Maintaining and Caring For Scissors

What are the most common ways to avoid damaging or breaking your hairdressing scissors?

1. An obvious one, but avoid dropping your scissors on the floor or any other hard surfaces. Damaging your scissors by dropping them often causes the blades to misaligned
2. Keep the scissors dry. You can get stains, rust and general corrosive damage to the scissors if they are kept wet
3. Don't over-tighten the scissors. Blades can be worn down or broken if the scissors are too tight.
4. If you notice the hair folding or bending while cutting, the tension adjustor is too loose. Avoid this as it can wear down the gears inside the scissors.
5. Refer to trained professionals when sharpening and repairing yoru scissors. Inexperienced sharpeners often break your scissors.
6. You can sharpen our own scissors if you are confident enough. There are many manual ways to sharpen scissors, like you would a knife. But the best results are from a grind blade machine.
7. If you hear your scissors making a "clacking"" or "clunky" noise, then you made need to check the alignment of the blades and the tension adjuster.
8. Experimenting with the tension adjustment of the scissors until you are able to cut the hair in nice clean smooth motions is ideal. Each pair and gear is different, and even when receiving a new pair of hairdressing scissors, you may need to adjust the tension.
9. The scissor repairs that are certified and experienced with sharpening machines are your best choice. If you have a premium pair of hairdressers, and you want to get ten or twenty years lifespan out of them, then make sure to use a professional repair and sharpening service.
10. Rust and corrosive damage can happen to you scissors without you noticing! Use a light brush to clean between the blades each month. For a thorough scissor after-clean, use alcohol wipes or Isopropyl.

The best way to clean dirty or stained scissors is with alcohol based cleaning liquids. You can use Isopropyl alcohol made especially to clean scissors and knives.This alcohol cleaning method removes any dirt, hair oil, etc.