Beware! Are you making a mistake on creating the rideline on your shears?

I just wrote an article for next month's ON THE EDGE called "Are You A Sharpening Sleuth?" (I'll publish it below) The jest of the article was recognizing and repairing a shear that had a rideline put on the shear using the flathone instead of a Shapton stone and not placing the pivot area on the wheel. I thought this was something everyone understood and would not do. However, I had a call from a sharpener that I really, really respect his opinion and has made suggestions in the past that have changed my sharpening style. This sharpener was experimenting with the very mistake I had addressed in my article. There are all sorts of correctable mistakes and sloppy errors that can be corrected easily on a ride. However, missing the pivot area in consequent sharpening is almost impossible. Don't work the ride without working the area under the pivot.



Here is the ON THE EDGE article.

Are You A Sharpening Sleuth?

Here are the clues. Let’s see if you can solve this sharpening crime.

The shears presented to me did not cut after a well trained sharpener sharpened them in the usual manner. Here are the clues. What was wrong with these shears?
Ñ The edge was sharp
Ñ The shears folded the hair
Ñ The screw would loosen after a few snips
Ñ The ride line appeared nearly perfect, shiny and even all the way down
Ñ The shears made a terrible noise, especially at the point where they were closed ¾ of the way
Ñ There were deep scratches inside the blade on the hollow around the pivot screw

What crime was committed on these shears in the past and how would you correct them?

Here was my judgment.

The last sharpener was not the sharpening criminal. He sharpened the shear in the correct way he was trained. The previous sharpener committed the crime. At first I thought there was a blade alignment problem but two clues sent me in another direction… the scratches at the pivot and the even rideline. A blade that is out of alignment will usually have an uneven ride. The noise from closing the shears was not at the blade, but at the pivot.

The scratches under the pivot most likely occurred because he honed the ride without including the area under the pivot. Possibly he used a sharpening stone but more likely he used a very fine micron disk on a metal plate and worked the ride on a flathone type system. As he held the blade in place, the metal edge of his plate created the scratches around the pivot. The scratches themselves did not cause the subsequent problems on the shears, they were the clue that allowed me to find the real culprit. When a rideline is worked or created without including the entire area under the pivot hole several problems are created. They may not be noticeable the first or second sharpening, but as metal is worn away the area under the pivot is thicker than the metal on the blade. Even if the shears appear to be adjusted correctly the blades may not actually come together to cut and hair folds. The blade will loosen and the area under the pivot will make noise. This was the problem with this shear.

Solution? I worked the ride very hard using a 1500 grit Shapton stone. I drew a Sharpie marker line across the entire ride and used more than my usual pressure to pull the entire blade across the stone including the pivot area. I gave extra pressure to the pivot and even worked it at the corner of the stone until I removed enough metal that the ride was flat and even all the way down. Then I moved to a 5000 grit Shapton to increase the smoothness and shine or the ride.

Afterwards I had to resharpen the outer edge of the shears because I had created a bur on the outside of the blade. Then I quickly removed the new bur on the inside with one swift pass on the 5000 Shapton stone. When I reassembled the shears they were quiet, smooth and sliced easily through a wet single ply tissue with minimum pressure. I felt the fact the shears were working were confirmation of my original verdict. Case closed.