How to Adjust or Realign Grass Shears and Hand Pruners at Home
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Pruning your flowers and trimming your grass has proven to be more than a hobby to an art. The claim is undisputable bearing in mind the precision and perfection required in pruning. Having optimally performing tool shears is key to achieving precision and perfection in the art of pruning and trimming. Aligning and adjusting your shears and pruners at the right angles is therefore essential for seamless pruning and trimming procedures.
However, many people fail get frustrated when their grass shears and hand pruners require adjusting or realigning. In this guide, we will walk through all the steps required to adjust and realign your shears and pruners at the comfort of your home. Remember, it is essential to ensure the cleanliness of your garden shears and pruners to facilitate easier adjusting.
What’s the Difference between Adjusting and Realigning your Shears and Pruners?
The major difference between the two terms lies at the purpose through which each is sought. Adjusting grass shears and hand pruners are done to have them fit a given purpose. In most cases, the shears and pruners may possess the inappropriate tension for your trimming purposes. Loose or too tight shears may require some adjustment to ensure trimming and pruning is done with precision.
While adjusting is not done to fix any real problem with the shears and pruner, realigning is quite different having it done to fix an existing problem. Realigning is notably done to correct any misaligned blades or handle them by repositioning them correctly. This, in conjuction with sharpening the shears, helps in promoting efficiency. So, how does one adjust or realign grass shears and hand pruners at home?
How to Adjust Grass Shears and Hand Pruners at Home
Probably the most common shears and pruners servicing you will encounter in your pruning and trimming task is shears and pruners adjustment. With the perfect tension for your shears and pruners, the difference in performance by your shears and pruners remains clear to see. While adjustment of shears and pruners is a matter of personal preference in most cases, there are common ideas we all share about the grass shears and hand pruners tension.
Step 1: Test the Tension of Your Grass Shears or Hand Pruner
Testing for your shear’s tension is the first step to conduct before thinking of adjusting it. The optimal test for your shear’s tension, you require to hold your shears or pruners with the tension adjuster facing you while the thumb handle faces your left hand. Ensure that the shears or pruners are perfectly straight while you’re holding them. Then, lift on the ring finger handle and open the blades of your shear or pruner halfway and allow the ring finger handle to go.
Notably, shears with a perfect tension should have the shear blade drop down and close about two-thirds of the way from the blades’ tip to the blades’ back. An inch or two inches gap between your blades. Failure to so, you might need to adjust your shears and pruners to the right tension. Adjusting grass shears and hand pruners can be done either manually or using pre-made adjustable angles.
Step 2: Adjust the Tension of Your Grass Shears or Hand Pruners
For manual adjustment, tightening the hand pruners and grass shears, one requires to adjust tension knobs to the right till the desired tension is achieved. If you require to loosen the grass shears or hand pruners, you require to turn the adjustment knob to the left. Notably, simple screws require the use of a screwdriver with the right size head for seamless adjustment of the tension. A perfect screwdriver will fit in the screw’s slotted shank through which tension is altered.
However, manual adjustment can be hectic at times especially with one losing or misplacing the uncommon adjustment screwdrivers. All these would be avoided by purchasing shears and pruners with pre-made adjustable angles. Such shears and pruners have a dial-spring-leaf-tension system that allows for easy adjustment without requiring any extra tool. You need not worry about its efficiency since the system holds the desired tension setting securely.
How to Realign Grass Shears and Hand Pruners
While grass shears and hand pruners come in different sizes, they all share a similar basic design. The design consists of a handle and a blade which are held together by a screw. Owing to their simple design, to adjust or realign grass shears and hand pruners at home is a straightforward task.
Realigning grass shears and hand pruners may be done to fix either misaligned blades, bent blades, or handles positioning. The following are the notable steps to realign bent or misaligned blades.
Step 1: Separate the shears or pruners into its basic components
You will require a screwdriver or wrench to loosen the nut holding the central screw or bolt respectively. After removing the screw or bolt, you can now separate the blades from each other.
Step 2: Fix any bent blades
To fix a bent blade, you require to straighten it or replace it with a better blade of the same specification. If you choose to straighten your blades, you might require a hammer and a solid flat surface such as a workbench. Hammer the blade carefully till it regains its perfect alignment.
Step 3: Put the blades together once again
Place the two blades of the shear or pruner in the recommended way and insert the screw or bolt its designated position. You will need to thread the nut and tighten it using a wrench. Sharpening dull blades before reassembling them is recommended.
Extra Tips
At times, your blades might be too bent that you can’t hammer them back into shape without damaging them. If the shears or pruners are not a valuable antique, its advisable that you consider purchasing a new pair. After realigning your shears and pruners, you might need to adjust them to ensure they have the correct tension.
Wrap Up
While it might seem a difficult task to do, to adjust or realign grass shears and hand pruners at home requires no professional skills in most cases. With the above tips, one can have their shears and pruners fixed for optimal functionality. However, if further repairs are required, you might need to visit a skilled person such as a blacksmith to fix your grass shears and hand pruners for you.
