Scissoring Training Wheels

Here. There’s a couple things that we can do to help people. What some people will have a problem with and an issue with… I’m going to use a really large pair of shears so I can demonstrate this well. The reason that you want your hand out at that balance point… Let me find it on this shear, every shear is a little bit different. This would be a shear that would fit Mark really nicely with that big large hand of his. Come on. There’s the balance point.

So I’m going to hold my thumb and my index finger right out to that balance point, and then roll up, insert. But what a lot of people will do is they’ll want to, what I consider, choking back on the shear, where they’ll come back here, and they don’t hold out at that balance point on the shear. Now, when you start running a shear this large, it’s really critical for your hand to have that shear balanced so you don’t put undue stress on your hand. You just can’t run the shear properly if they choke back on it. But we see a lot of people who are just starting to scissor, this is a real common problem for them.

So we’ve got some what I would consider training wheels. You can fit any shear with these training wheels. We’ll just take a real basic pair of shears that is a longer shear. It’s got a pretty nice long shank here. And what I’ve picked up, a couple things that are just common elements that you can find anywhere. This is a triangular pencil guard. And what we’ve done is we’ve just gone ahead and slit the one side or one edge of the triangle. And what that is going to do is it’s going to just slip right over the shaft of the shear. You’re going to put it on the lower shaft, which is normally the one with the tang on it.

And if you look in notes from the grooming table, you’ll see a whole diagram of the parts of the shear. But you’re going to put it on that lower shaft with the tang. And what this is going to do is it’s going to help your hand stay farther out at that balance point of the shear so your finger cannot choke back on that scissor.

Now, another common problem that people have is their thumb wants to slide through. And so, they’re trying to scissor like this. Well, if you’re scissoring like this, you don’t have good throw of the shear. It’s very hard to open just your thumb and keep the rest of your hand stabilized, and you’re just not opening the blade up. I want to see people use the full blade. That’s why they make these beautiful long shears, so you can cover a lot of ground. You’ve got a big, tall dog with a lot of legs, you want to be able to cover a lot of ground. So if you use just your thumb, you can really open and close that shear without much effort on your hand at all. It’s very easy to do. But people have a tendency to want to push their thumb through.

Now the way that you actually should be running the shear is just putting a little bit of light forward pressure on the finger ring through this shaft and through this blade. This is going to be your cutting blade. And if you have that tendency to want to slide on through, a couple things we can do. These are readily available in the pet grooming industry. They’re just finger guards that will slide, they’ll insert right into the ring of the shear. It’s a little tight fit. They’ll stay nicely in place.

And then the next thing that we can do is we can actually fit this shear with a bandaid. Every grooming shop should have plenty of these floating around. We’re just going to go ahead and take the bandage off so it’s sticky. And I’m going to insert my thumb where it would be properly fitted in the shear, and I’m just going to lay the bandage right across the top, and then bring it across the bottom. This will keep my thumb from sliding through, so that now I must open and close that shear. I must hold that shear properly. This is what you’re looking for. These are some great training wheels.

Once you start feeling more comfortable with them, go ahead and take at least one piece of the training wheels off, and continue to run with them. Once you get it so that you can open and close, go ahead and take off that bandage. Ooh, it’s sticky. Really sticky. And again, open and close, only your thumb holding the shear properly, right angles to your hand. It doesn’t mean you can still cock your wrist. This is still at right angles, as well as this, as well as this. But that shear hasn’t moved in my hand. It’s still at right angle to my entire hand. You’re going to move it, pivot it. And once you get comfortable with it, you can scissor and mold and sculpt any portion of a dog’s coat and get that beautiful velvet finish. Now we did…