How Can You Keep Your Hairdressing Scissors Performing At Their Best?
A good pair of well-maintained hairdressing scissors is an essential bit of kit for every barber and stylist. But how can you look after your scissors to keep them performing at their best between sharpening appointments?
Store Them Safely
The easiest and most important way to look after your blades is to make sure they’re stored carefully and safely between uses. We recommend keeping them in a scissor pot or a case (and if you’re a rental customer, we’re more than happy to provide you with either or both, free of charge!) Safely stored scissors are a lot less likely to get dropped or damaged, which means a lot less heartache and stress for you.
Keep them clean
Lots of the hair products that are used in barbers and hair salons contain ingredients that aren’t water soluble. When they’ve been used before or during a cut, scissors can pick up a thin film of this residue which then sits along the surface of the blade. This barely-visible film can cause problems in a couple of ways; firstly, it impacts how well the scissors cut, and it can also cause the scissors to get blunt more quickly.
Your scissors will absolutely need regular cleaning, and we provide our rental customers with a specially formulated spray to do this. Keeping your scissors in solutions like Barbicide can and does cause damage. We regularly see scissors that are suffering because they’ve been stored in liquid disinfectant, and this is something we never recommend. All you need is a quick spray of our scissor cleaner before wiping off any excess with a clean tissue, and your scissors will be clean and sanitised without any damage. We recommend you do this whenever you have a chance; between each client ideally, but daily as a minimum.
Oil Your Scissors
We also recommend using our scissor oil at the end of each day. Scissors that are clean and oiled cut better, and also tend to last longer between sharpenings. Open your scissors up, and pop a drop of oil onto the joint to ensure they move freely and easily. Any grime, dirt of hair caught between the hinge will ease free. It’s important to use specially formulated scissor oil (again, we’re happy to supply our rental customers with bottles of this for free!) as even clipper blade oil can cause problems for hairdressing scissors. Need more oil? Just give us a shout!
Only Use Your Scissors On Hair
It’s also super important that you don’t use your scissors for cutting anything other than hair. Even snipping off a piece of Sellotape with them can cause problems, as you’ll get a sticky residue along your blade and your scissors won’t cut because of this. Hairdressing scissors are a lot more temperamental than you might expect, and using them to cut wrapping paper or plastic clothing tags can cause real issues. If it’s not hair, don’t cut it! Hairdressing scissors are precise little things, and they don’t forgive you easily.
Call Us Out As Soon As You Need Us
Lastly, don’t try to plough through with scissors that don’t feel right. If there’s a problem, your scissors aren’t going to rectify it themselves – leaving it will only make it worse. Give us a call as soon as you feel like your scissors might need some attention and we’ll get them back to their best straight away. We’ve written a quick guide on how to tell when your hairdressing scissors need sharpening, here.
The sooner we take a look, the quicker we can get them back in top condition and save you from potentially bigger issues down the line.
You can find out more about our Mobile Scissor Sharpening Service here, and if you’d like to read about our Scissor Rental Service, you can find that here.