TEFLON TUESDAY: THE STORY BEHIND OUR SIGNATURE BLACK SCISSOR
Yesterday we launched a competition to win a free pair of our Teflon coated sidebent scissors – check our social media to enter – but did you know how we came to make them?
The scissors up for grabs, click to view
In the early 1990’s, we were approached by a company supplying tools to the manufacturers of Kevlar. Kevlar is bullet and stab resistant material (think police stab vests) and poses a singular problem for most scissors, in that it is designed to resist attempts to penetrate it.
The Kevlar cutting shears, click to view
‘Cutting Experts’ that we are, we were asked to solve this problem, which we did through a process of trial and error. At one stage, a graduate doing a Master’s project in the department of materials engineering even chose to study how the scissors worked. Lots of tests were done, with electron micrographs taken of the cutting edges and so on, but nobody could work out why the scissors cut the Kevlar, so we now call it a black art! Some years after this, when new types of polymer materials were arriving on the market such as glass fibre fabrics and carbon fibre fabrics and mixtures of these, we undertook further testing to develop scissors for cutting these too. Read More
At the time we wanted to be able to easily differentiate between these scissors and others in our factory, coating them in Teflon helped to solve this issue and also provided a durable, non-stick exterior which allowed the Kevlar fibres to fall away quickly and not become trapped.
Teflon coated paper scissors, click to view
Unintentionally, the coating made the scissors appearance sleek and very attractive. It also felt smooth and pleasant to the touch which, is why we began to coat other scissors too and launched a range; Wilkinson Black. You’ll find a variety of tools including paper scissors, electrician’s snips, garden pruners and sidebents available within our store, that all came from that initial request back in the 90’s to cut the uncuttable.
