I sew a lot. Perhaps you’ve noticed this? As part of sewing, I also am always cutting. I have a pair of really nice Ginger scissors that I bought on a splurge when I first signed up for my one sewing class in college. They’re great scissors and I keep them stored in their original box, under strict orders to my children to never, ever use them. All those with mothers that threatened them if they should ever use their nice sewing shears on paper raise your hand! But even with those rules in force, after 11 years of heavy use, they were starting to dull. I had especially noticed it in the last couple of months. So when CSN Stores gave me an opportunity to do another review, I ran straight to the scissor section thinking I’d replace my dear old Gingers. But instead I found this:
Chef's Choice Manual Diamond Hone Scissor Sharpener
And I thought, “what the heck” and ordered it then and there. A couple of days later, there it was waiting for me on my front porch (“thanks, package man” yelled my kids). It came just in time for me to start cutting out the pieces for my Cuff/Placket assignment. The material I’d chosen is very sheer and has a strange…flakiness to it. My dull scissors were pretty much tearing it apart. 
It was hard to get a picture, but you can kind of see how it’s fraying even as I’m cutting and the edges aren’t clean at all.
Cue scissor sharpener. 
I admit it, when I pulled it all out, I was intimidated and thought I’d made a horrible mistake. It comes with a lot of pieces and a detailed manual. Maybe I should have just got new scissors and demoted my old ones to the ranks of backup? But I pressed forward.
First, there are two sets of grinding plates, including one with a groove in it to sharpen tools like ice picks. If you own an ice pick. Maybe that will be my next purchase. The plates all store nicely in the sharpener casing, which is nice.
There are three angled guides, to be used depending on the type of scissors you have. These ensure that the blades stay at the right angles. There are also instructions for reangling your scissors, but I didn’t do that. 
Mine are knife blade scissors, so I followed the instructions for that category of blade. And seriously folks, super easy. Like ridiculously easy. The instructions were simple to follow and not near as intimidating as they first looked. In fact, you don’t need them all, there are so many because of different types of scissors needing different instructions. You just find the instructions that are for your type of scissors and go from there. 
Also, it was pretty cool to learn a little bit more about my scissors and how they work, as explained in the included instructions. For example, I know all about burrs now. Or at least enough to know how to find one on my newly sharpened scissors and recognize when they’re good to go.
Which mine now are. Even though I couldn’t really get a great picture, I’m getting much cleaner cuts, post-sharpening:
With nice shears costing as much as they do, it seems silly not to invest in a sharpener to keep them at their best.
And this way, when my kids decide to cut out some construction paper with mine, I know that all is not lost. I can always sharpen them back to fabric-worthy perfection.
And because the sharpener was so reasonably priced, I had enough to pick up these, too.
I pretty much love them more than I should. They’re Demonia’s Mary Jane in Red Pearlized. And they come in five colors, so you really have no reason to not grab a few for your own devices. Get them at CSN’s Shoe’s Got Sole here. You’re welcome.
