Excellent Edges edge-ucation

With over 20 years in the hairdressing industry, I am still yet to find or make the magical scissor that can do everything perfectly. This is not a shortcoming on my behalf; it just simply does not exist.

In this day and age, more than ever before I am finding hairdressers are more aware of what they can and can't do with a particular pair of scissors.

Something Excellent Edges has been promoting for some time the need for hairdressers to have a kit rather than just the one general purpose scissor.  A basic kit would consist of a blunt cutter or serrated scissor, a slicing and/or general purpose scissor and a texturiser.

A kit like this would allow a hairdresser to perform any type of haircut they needed to do. It does not have to cost thousands of dollars; in fact it can be put together for as little $450.

It is important for hairdressers to understand why you need to have so many scissors in a kit. The main difference in these scissors is the angle of the blade edge. A blunt cutting scissor will have an angle of 55 degrees on the blades; a general purpose scissor has an angle of 45 degrees whereas a slicing scissor will have an angle of 35 degrees.

So what happens when you blunt cut with a slicing scissor? You put excessive wear on the cutting blade and in time, it will not slice cut anymore. This will not happen straight away but it does triple the amount of wear on the blade and increases the amount of times a hairdresser will have to have their scissors serviced. When you only slice with a slicing scissor the blade will stay a lot sharper and will double the life of the edge.

It is very important for you to understand that you may be outlaying more money in the beginning for the kit, but you are actually saving much more because they will be serviced less frequently and each scissor will cut better.

The first thing to do is to analyse what you have in your kit already, chances are you will have an ok scissor which could be serrated and you can use it as your blunt cutter; then all you have to do is top up your kit with the other scissors you require.

Not only will specialised edges do specific jobs better and more easily by spreading the wear over a number of different edges, you increase the useful life of each.

Tim Payne