Just realized I was sharpening my shears wrong for 5 years

Watched a video from a barber in Chicago who did a side by side comparison of convex versus bevel edge sharpening, and the difference in how the hair fell off was night and day. I tried his method on my old Mizutani shears last week and the cut felt smoother than when they were new. How long did it take you guys to nail down your sharpening technique?

2 comments

2 Comments

harper_foster1mo ago

Man, five years is rough but honestly that's pretty common. I've been cutting for about eight years and I only really got the hang of convex sharpening like a year ago. What I'm curious about is how you changed your angle approach once you saw that video. Did you switch to a completely different stone or just adjust your wrist position?

craig.mila1mo ago

@harper_foster I'm gonna push back a little here. Five years is nothing compared to learning sharpening on the job from old-timers (like my mentor who used a beat-up King stone for 20 years). I actually think convex sharpening is overhyped for most shear work. I saw that same Chicago barber video and tried his method and my cuts got worse for two weeks before I went back to my bevel edge. The real trick isn't the angle or the stone, it's keeping your fingers loose (tense hands wreck everything). I'd argue that 90% of sharpening problems come from rushing the burr removal phase, not from the initial angle. So maybe your old technique was actually fine and the new video just made you pay more attention to the finish pass.