• If Only@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    When you squeeze the handles the blades press together. Using the wrong hand for most scissors it produces a small gap that prevents them from cutting the paper. It’ll just pinch it.

    Try it, then try cutting again with the correct hand for your scissors. Odds are your scissors are not ambidextrous but you just never had a reason to discover this.

    • mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca
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      1 day ago

      wouldn’t a more rigid and tighter pivot pin prevent this?

      if so, I guess I don’t have a pair of scissors shitty enough for this to be a problem. I first tried one of my good scissors with both hands to see how it went, no discernible difference with left or right hand despite the scissors being ergonomically molded for right hand use. so I tried my pair of $2 scissors that have a noticeably loose pin and no handed molding on the grips, and I’m struggling to decide if the offhand use was actually worse by a couple percent or if it’s just placebo lol

      • PlantJam@lemmy.world
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        23 hours ago

        You know how you can kind of pull the handles a certain way to make bad scissors work? Using them in the wrong hand is like the opposite of that. As you observed it’s less of an issue with decent scissors.

        • mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca
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          7 hours ago

          I needed to cut some rags today out of old t-shirts, so I did some more testing

          it was definitely noticeable with the cheap scissors in the wrong hand if not compensated for, and even aside from actual performance, I can clearly see the blades spread apart when closing with regular form in the off hand. with compensation to push the blades together, they cut fine, but yeah that would be annoying to have to do all the time

          with the decent fiskars scissors though, no difference at all

          I am surprised by how the paper and envelope cutting tests I did yesterday showed no difference, though. I guess the paper is rigid enough to hold the blades together before they actually cut or something, whereas the fabric clear tries to get between and spread them