On Fri, 16 Dec 2005 00:38:37 GMT, Elizabeth Young
wrote:

I have tried to get my Wiss pinking shears sharpened locally.

It's pretty much impossible to sharpen pinking shears. It's not easy to
sharpen your own brand, where you can jig up to do one design over and
over, but to sharpen any old pair that comes in off the street is very
hard. Also, most pinking shears simply _can't_ be sharpened - they take
their adjustment from the pivot and so you need to dismantle them and
work on the pivots to get the set right again. If they're not
maunfactured to allow this, then it's really not practical.

On the bright side, scissors rarely need full sharpening anyway.
Generally a light honing is enough to make them cut again and as merely
honing them doesn't disturb their set, then this is an easy job. It's
entirely practical for DIY.

Get a small diamond hone on a plastic stick (DMT make good ones). Use
this, wet, to polish the top edge of the blade - the edge that contacts,
but doesn't slide over, the other blade of the scissors (i.e. not the
face). Be careful to hold the hone at the right angle and to not wobble
it (thus making a rounded surface). A few minutes work here will
generally rejuvenate most straight bladed scissors and a small hone will
even allow you to work on most pinking shears. Even with a serrated
blade, honing the non-serrated blade is worthwhile. So long as the
scissors aren't worn so badly that their set is affected, this is
usually enough to get them cutting again.