Part of sharpening some of the higher end scissors is to take a small amount of material off the back of the blade to form the rideline. For hairdressing scissors this is reasonably simple with a nice flat high grit waterstone.

Groomers however have discovered the curve scissor which is a royal pain in the behind as each one is a slightly different curve so you can’t get one stone to fit this curve. Various sharpeners have various solutions from using a small flat stone to work this area through to sticky sandpaper and an old piece of drain pipe. If it works it works. I spotted some curved waterstones on a UK site and I bought a pair of them

Over in the USA there is a couple of 3D jigs that have been produced for solving this issue. One is imported into the UK and while I like the principle I feel that as an engineer with a 3D printer i can do better.

Hence the McRideline was thrust into this world. It is an ongoing project and it will probably end up with it’s own page on this website. Being a tight git i of course used what i had on hnd which is some spare bearings from the 3D printer and some odds and sods hanging around including the stones I purchased before.

The stones I bought where a wee bit on the soft side and with high end scissors. Sometimes the scissors take more off the stone then the stone takes off the scissors. In a game of rock paper scissors rock has become a very poor tatic.

Time for another option.

There is harder stones that can be purchased from a nice man in Hong Kong but with global supply lines being a bit …..…problematic these days I’m not waiting.

Taking inspiration from Mr Drainpipe who is testing one of the prototypes I am decided to use a curved surface and some sandpaper. This design needs a way of clamping sandpaper which needs a threaded connection. Normally for this I would just tap threads into the plastic or drop in a nut insert.

But after watching CNCkitchen who is a 3D printing youtuber who is more towards the engineering end of 3D printing than landfill fodder I thought to have a go at brass inserts.

These have the advantage of giving you a metal thread in your 3D printed parts which makes them look better as well as the metal doesn’t wear as much as plastic. For something which is going to be taken apart alot this is a major advantage.

Stefan of CNCKitchen has also released a range of inserts. So I tried a set and i am very impressed with them both in product and in shipping etc.

He has a blog post on how to use them HERE