Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 September 1893 — How Scissors Are Made. [ARTICLE]

How Scissors Are Made.

Though no complexities are involved in the making of scissors, or much skill required, yet the process is very interesting. They are forged from good bar steel heated to redness, each blade being cut off with sufficient metal to form the shank, or that destined to become the cutting part, and bow, or that which later on is fashioned into the holding portion. For the bow a small hole is punched, and that is afterward expanded to the proper size by hammering it on a conical anvil, after which both shank and bow are filed into a more perfect shape and the hole bored in the middle for the rivet. The blades are next ground and the handles filed smooth and burnished with oil and emery, after which the pairs are fitted together and tested as to their easy working. They are not yet finished, however. They have to undergo hardening and tempering, and be again adjusted, after which they are finally put together again and polished for the third time. In comparing the edges of knives and scissors it will be noticed, of course, that the latter are not in any way so sharply ground as the former, and that, in cutting, scissors crush and bruise more thaa kaives. —World’s Progress.