The other morning I put on a shirt and realized there were a couple of loose threads on the cuffs. Without taking the shirt off, I grabbed a scissors and clipped off the thread on the left sleeve, then switched hands and tried to clip the thread on the other sleeve. No matter how I tried, I could not cut off the thread using my left hand. I spent the next 15 minutes performing an epoche on those scissors and could not figure out WHY I can’t use them with my left hand. I wasn’t trying to cut out a complicated pattern or anything, just clip a thread.
Why can’t I use standard scissors with my left hand?
Would I be unable to use lefty scissors with my right hand?
Would it be possible to make ambidextrious scissors?
Why aren’t hedge clippers etc. handed tools?
As a left-hander I have to ask, why didn’t you just take the shirt off and clip the threads rather than waste 15 minutes learning that right-handed scissors don’t work well in left hands?
To answer your questions:
One blade is designed for the thumb to manipulate, the other blade is designed for the fingers. If you tried left-handed scissors in your right hand, you’d most liely experience the same awkwardness. Those round head scissors first-graders use for crafts are about the closest thing to ambidextrous I’ve ever seen. Of course, they’re made for hands that don’t have much strength or fine-moto skills. Some tools do favor one hand. Hedge clippers don’t because you hold one handle with each hand, and the blades don’t care which hand is exerting more force when they come together. Same with pliers. Wrenches can be a problem, though.
In my experience (left-handed): when you have trouble with using right-handed scissors with your left hand, it goes much better when you hold them upside down.
Salaam. A
Also, I remember in grade school that there were lefty scissors and they were the one with the little round finger holes. FWIW, the scissors I was using had no difference in the finger holes. I must assume it makes some difference which blade the majority of the force comes from, but why?
I guess I could have just taken the shirt off, but I just wanted to figure this out, call me neurotic.
Many scissors are made with blades that are slightly curved toward each other. In the normal action of the hand when using scissors, the thumb pushes away from the hand and the forefinger pulls toward the palm. The scissors are hinged so that the blades controlled by the thumb and forefinger will be pulled toward each other as the fingers are squeezed together. When thescissors are held in the “wrong” hand (either left or right), the natural motion of the thumb and forefinger work in the opposite direction from the hinge design, forcing the blades apart and preventing the scissors from cutting. It is possible to use such scissors in the “wrong” hand, but it takes conscious effort pull in the thumb and push out the forefinger and it tends to cause cramping after a fairly brief period of that activity.
Those clippers are usually for clipping string in shops that used to wrap merchandise in paper or threads in clothing manufacture.
I have a pair with an eye for the little finger so they won’t fall out of your hand. Used then long ago to tie packages of mail (envelopes) for distribution processing. Then the PO found out rubber bands were faster, just as secure, and could be recycled within the postal system and save money, eliminate the string mess and disposal problem.
BTW SIXSwords try holding the scissors normally in your right hand. Place all of your finger tips together and slide the scissors onto the fingers of the left hand. It works(ed) for me. “Try It You’ll Like It.”
My mom is left handed. I am right handed. As a kid, I would often use her sissors because I couldn’t find my own. I had no trouble using them… I think living in a house with a lefthander I just learned to do somethings with my left hand. Just as left handed poeple learn to do things with their right hands.
Just realized the problem SIXSwords is having with his scissors is that they are loose at the pivot joint. A screw driver may help otherwise a hammer and anvil.
Right handed scissors are made so that the thumb and fingers naturally exert side forces to keep the cuttig edges together.
When a left handed person uses right handed scissors they have to consciously exert side pressure to keep the cutting enges cutting!
And that right there is exactly it. The big difference between left-handed and right-handed scissors is that the pivot joint is reversed. They’re mirror images of each other, just like your hands.