Pixietown

since I want to hand sew my own clothes and stuff I need decent tools, including dressmaker shears. but a reputable one is an investment, and I already splurged my spending money on ropes

I have these shears lying around that are from a reputable brand, but they're in terrible state can we make these become a "decent tool" again, and avoid more consumption? I guess if you disassemble them, vinegar the rust away a bit, then file away the rest, then sharpen… I've never tried sharpening scissors, but I have a whetstone somewhere… could even spray that handle to redo the painting while I'm at it?

- this https://www.engineeringforchange.org/news/how-to-make-penetrating-oil/

says that vegetable oil + 10% acetone is as good a penetrating oil as wd40

- Japanese people use tsubaki oil on blades

- I have both tsubaki oil and acetone

I don't have steel wool here tho would 600-grit sandpaper be too abrasive for it, do you think.

@elilla I mean, it's stainless, it's supposed to work like that. You can probably oil it a little

I once forgot a bunch of drill bits in the garden and they rusted horribly. I tried to give them a vinegar bath, but even after several days there was too much rust to scrub. I AHDH forgot about it for a month or so, by then the water was a rust sludge but the bits weren't recoverable. I gave up in frustration, threw away the whole thing and got new bits.

now this year I was reading on natural and plant-based dyeing (I'm especially interested in charcoal dyes, which aren't very commented on for some reason) and so I was learning about mordants and fixatives. turns out the rust sludge would be an ideal ferrous sulfate mordant for dark dyes like charcoal dust.

I mean just getting some ferrous sulfate is cheap, but finding out about this gave me a bit of a, "trash is actually treasure" moment

I extremely love the dialect of this man, could listen to this for days
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AIBCVMTYg4

tool man: "A knife blade is sharpened on both [sa̟e̯d͜s], you gotta get a nice clean edge for t' cuʔ to work well… scissors work entirely [dɪfɹ̈n̩]… the two sides that come together, 's completely [flɛ͜ət̚]…"

me: this man is 100% trustworthy and I'll believe everything he says

@elilla

Great, thats something that I thought it was worth telling you. I have had "profesional sharpeners" sharpen scissors on the inside and fucking them up for ever.

Great accent, very soothing. For once, I wish the video was longer haha

I don't know what's the proper tool for this kind of bolt but I gently pried (plied?) it open with small pliers. taking this photo to document which washer goes with the nut—hmm that little coil was in between the blades around the bolt, right? I get confused with these things very easily.

I'll let the parts soak in vinegar for a few hours and go take care of like, the rest of my life. in the evening I'll give it a go with the homemade penetrating oil and file, then if I can sucessfully remove the rust this way, sharpening. will take the opportunity to sharpen my kitchen knives also

(3 days later) now that I'm finished with the maintanance of my ropes, I can finally be free to… maintain that old pair of scissors :3

it's been in vinegar since that day, and the vinegar has softened a little bit of the rust but not much. time to take out the files

dressmaker shears have a hollow on the inner blades and it's important to maintain it. if you look at the edges here you can see how that impedes using a sanding block. I switched to the steel brush and sandpaper held in my hand

for a second I thought I had badly cut myself somehow, but then I realised I'm using homemade penetrating oil (jojoba plus 10% acetone) while wearing red nail polish.

the recipe was based on "cooking oil" and I remembered too late that jojoba is chemically a wax not oil, so I was unsure whether it would work, but it washed the rust grime from the loose pieces right off at least. the little glass bottle that my old tsubaki oil came in was perfect to make and store this solution. so the last few drops of tsubaki still lived homeopathically for one of the purposes camellia oil is produced: blade maintenance.

took some vigours sanding but the blade looked much better! however, some of those stains wouldn't go out no matter how much I rubbed them. I eventually gave up on my compunctions about scratching and got out the rough sandpaper (80), but it didn't help either.

see, my eyes aren't that great anymore, but I took out my trust loupe and yup: these aren't stains, they're corroded holes. I would need to remove too much metal to fully eliminate them. I was dreaming of freshly shiny metal like it was new, but here I cut out my losses and stopped, aesthetically disappointing though it was.

I filed both blades with 600 grit sandpaper, using the steel brush on nooks and cranies and the 80 grit when it was too hard. all with generous amounts of homemade penetrating oil. then I finished with the 1000 grit, unsure if it's even doing anything, but chasing shiny and polish at least.

the vinegar and the acetone and accidental sanding damaged the paint near the handle, but it was already plenty damaged by age anyway. at some point I'll just soak it in acetone, remove all the old paint, and figure out some nature-friendly metal coat to repaint it, but that's for another day.

and then the most important step: sharpening.

I got my kitchen knife and my EDC knife while I was at it, might as well sharpen everybody.