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.
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.
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.
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. |
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.
What are the most common ways to avoid damaging or breaking your hairdressing scissors?
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.
There is no such thing as a self-sharpening pair of scissors, so how often should you sharpen your hairdressing or barber shears?
Hairdressing and barber sharpening services point out the obvious that cutting more hair means the scissors will go blunt faster, so you need to watch when the scissors stop cutting sharply.
It is hard to know how often you need to sharpen your scissors, as only the hairdresser or barber will know when.
Japanese hair scissors use premium Cobalt, 440C and VG10 steel that require sharpening less often.
If you buy a cheap pair from Priceline or Chemist Warehouse, you will find these going blunt within one to two months.
These cheaper scissors require sharpening a lot more often and will eventually cost you more than the overall price of a Japanese hairdressing shear.
So save yourself the high cost of sharpening too often with a premium shear.
The average cost of sharpening scissors is $50-$100, and a cheaper $100 pair of Shears made from basic steel requires sharpening four to six times a year. At a minimum, you will eventually pair $200-300 a year to maintain their performance.
Now an expensive pair of Yasaka Shears costs up to $400, but if you clean, oil and main these well, they only require sharpening once or twice a year. This saves you $100-200 a year. Well worth the investment for a pair that doesn't require sharpening often.
Read about: Australia's Best Scissor Sharpening Service In Each City
Here we talk about all the factors to that decide how often you will need to sharpen your hair scissors. Depending on the quality, maintenance and everyday use, your scissors can be sharpened once a month or once a year!
This incorporates cleaning and oiling, alongside right strain and change. Different components are the hair surface, dry versus wet, number of cuts performed throughout some stretch of time and nature of the scissors.
This is one of the most posed inquiries. At any rate once every year is a decent rule. A ton is basically founded on consideration and upkeep. Day by day care and upkeep should be performed.
This incorporates cleaning and oiling, alongside right strain and change. Different variables are the hair surface, dry versus wet, number of cuts performed throughout some undefined time frame and nature of the scissors.
For dependable sharpness, search for cutting and diminishing shears that:
The hardness of steel uses a Rockwell HRC hardness; where the expensive steel is around 52 HRC and the cheaper steel is around 44 HRC.
Scissors from the Japanese 440c steel (estimated 48-52 HRC) and VG-10 are some if the most popular for professions.
How are you using your scissors?Everyone uses hair scissors differently, and they way you use them is a big deciding factor to how often you should sharpen your scissors.
Your scissors should remain sharper if you are following:
Also, avoid cutting hair extensions, or treated hair that has chemicals, liquids, conditioner or gels that are left in.
Like most things in life, the more you care and maintain your scissors, the less often you will need to sharpen them.
To avoid sharpening your scissors often, make sure to care for them with the following: