[grues-dinner]

After another pair of kitchen scissors had the plastic handle fall off, revealing a tiny metal tang creating the inevitable weak spot, I went looking for an all-metal pair. Not at all easy to source as it turns out, there are only a small handful of even vaguely reasonably priced models available.

They're just scissors, how are we still as a species finding ways to make them shitter and more breakable? They're a solved problem and yet some guy managed to hit on a way make them out of melting plastic?

I don't need them to be laser etched or artisanal or blessed by levitating monks or whatever. Just two bits of metal with a rivet that will still be scissor-shaped when I'm dead and buried. It's not even that much more metal than plastic handled scissors, and the hard bit is in the edges anyway, not the handles. It's probably never been cheaper or easier to make not-shit things and yet there's just so much shit everywhere.

[nielsbot]

Slightly an aside, but you might try searching for dressmakers shears instead. Lots of those seem to be all metal. (Not sure what you consider a reasonable price however)

[grues-dinner]

Funnily enough I do have a pair of exactly those from my grandmother (still very functional maybe 80 years on)! Drop-forged and everything. They were probably a week's salary or something!

[pfdietz]

> how are we still as a species finding ways to make them shitter and more breakable?

Products when they are first introduced tend to be overengineered, since the way they will be used is not entirely known. As this knowledge accumulates the products can be optimized to be just good enough (just strong enough, just durable enough). You should expect in equilibrium that products will be optimized for minimum cost at the minimum tolerable level of quality.

[B1FF_PSUVM]

Preach it. I'm holding tight to my heirloom all stainless steel scissors with "don't-run-with-scissors" sharp ends.

On the other hand, we aren't being advised not to run with scissors any more.

[actionfromafar]

Come to think of it, what's the point of the sharp ends? Seems mostly useful in horror movies.

[black6]

There's a booth in a consignment shop in town that has a load of old high carbon steel Case scissors of different sizes. Resale shops may be the way to go.

[fritzo]

Labor has never been more expensive than now. Raw resources have never been under more competition than now. We as a species are more numerous and consume more scissors than ever before. Supply chains have never farther separated end user from producer, as now.

[grues-dinner]

Scissors have never required less labour to make and steel is maybe not quite as cheap as 5 years ago but still mind meltingly cheap in historical terms. The metal in the handles of an all-metal pair of scissors is maybe a dollar. Bulk steel is 50 cents a pound.

Scissors also don't have to be "consumed", or at least not substantially over the course of a human life. I'd expect them to be durable goods. It's more than possible to make a pair of scissors, for not even that much more that a shit pair, that outlasts the first owner. We just generally choose not to.

[mech9879876]

It's a lot cheaper to cut the blades out of flat sheet metal and affix the injection molded plastic handles to give a nice 3d sculpted ergonomic handle than it is to cast/forge/machine the ergonomic handle out of steel. For 90 percent of users it will be just fine to use plastic, and the plastic will last for decades without issue.

[yellowapple]

I don't buy the "but good scissors cost too much to make today" argument.

> Labor has never been more expensive than now.

Each hour of wages is amortized across dozens, hundreds, possibly thousands of scissors. You could double the wages of everyone involved from manufacturing to fulfillment to logistics to sales and it'd translate to maybe multiple pennies' worth of a per-scissor cost increase.

> Raw resources have never been under more competition than now.

As the other commenter pointed out, steel's still plenty cheap and abundant.

> We as a species are more numerous and consume more scissors than ever before.

That's more than offset by our increased ability to make scissors at scale.

> Supply chains have never farther separated end user from producer, as now.

The whole point of that separation is to drive down costs.

----

All in all, the available information points rather squarely to manufacturers being greedy rather than costs somehow forcing their hand.