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I got left-handed scissors for the first time about a year ago, and holy shit, the urge to cut everything.
The fact that scissors don’t hurt my hand and make it cramp for some stupid reason.
The fact that I can just glide through gift-wrap like it was paper instead of something that tears and shatters and shreds and looks ugly no matter how hard I work…
If you’re left-handed and you think left-handed scissors are a meme, go and spend the $14 that it costs for a pair of left-handed scissors and report back and tell me that that shit is not life-changing.
Left-handed scissors will make a left-handed person feel like they have been being betrayed and deceived and lied to their entire fucking life.
And you can lend them to right handed people for them to understand your pain. (Handle first or blade first, depending on the person)
The fact that I can just glide through gift-wrap like it was paper instead of something that tears and shatters and shreds and looks ugly no matter how hard I work…
That’s just the difference between sharp/tight scissors and dull/loose scissors. A good quality ambidexterity scissor will solve that pain point.
Blade orientation and cutting edge facing you does make cutting with precision much easier and nicer though.
Maybe you live in a world where razor-sharp high-quality scissors are the norm, but every pair of right-handed scissors or “ambidextrous” scissors I have ever used have always torn gift wrapping paper until I got a $14 pair of left-handed scissors.
It’s not just the cutting blade, it’s also the angle at which you hold it, and how your body twists and contorts when you grip and squeeze.
Maybe my ergonomics are different from yours. That might be an issue as well, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and not downvote you or anything, but in my personal experience, that has always been the case until I got the scissors that were made for me.
Maybe you live in a world where razor-sharp high-quality scissors are the norm
I don’t understand the downvotes or the tone here, I wasn’t combative and I obviously don’t live in a world where high quality scissors are the norm, which is why I was adding the info to the conversation. I’ve used whatever scissors I could find my entire life, until I’ve used a good pair it’s like the experience you describe finding the left handed scissors. “so this is what cutting with scissors is like?”
it’s also the angle at which you hold it, and how your body twists and contorts when you grip and squeeze.
I completely agree, that makes a huge difference and makes it worth the investment alone, that’s what I was saying.
But I can use my good scissors with my left hand to glide through giftwrap without tearing, although it wouldn’t be very comfortable as the grip is backwards and I’m not left handed; I’m certain you can take your good left handed scissors and use them to glide through giftwrap with your right hand.
It won’t be comfortable, buy it’ll work, because they’re good scissors. And I don’t know why saying $14 like it’s cheap, most people get their scissors in a 3 pack for $10…
I’m on $14 because that’s what the first set of lefty scissors I ever found cost me. Idk if anyone makes left handed cheaper ones.
Yeah… But I wasn’t knocking the $14 scissors or suggesting you get cheaper ones, I’m saying they cut good because they aren’t super cheap… And they’re comfortable for left handed people because they’re left handed.
Same vibe
That reminds me of hyperbole and a half. Thank you.
Your link got censored, I think.
It’s the “menace” strip on hyperbole and a half.
deleted by creator
When our child started cutting, we bought her left handed scissors so that she had both at had and could try it out. Her left handed dad - who grew up in a country which had no left handed things - wasn’t able to use the scissors. He can also not use a left handed guitar, he has played like a righty his whole life because a left handed guitar was unaffordable and “you need two hands to play the guitar anyway, duh”.
Anyway, she’s developing into a lefty, but no one is touching the scissors.
I’m left-handed for drawing and writing but everything else its a tossup for which hand I’ll gravitate towards. Some things I just end up equally not-great at no matter how I approach it
There’s many old left handed guitar legends who play on a right handed guitar for that exact reason, jimi hendrix for example. Tho he flipped the guitar around and restrung it basically upside down.
I also never really understood why my picking hand is my right hand when I’m right handed, I feel like I’m way more dextrous with it which would help with fretting. But at this point it’s what I’m used to I guess
Picking requires much more control than fretting once you’ve learned the basic shapes or movement.
Think of the timing in it. The fret can be pressed at any time between two notes, but the picking needs to be exactly on time. Fretting basically becomes muscle memory while the picking is the real decision making.
Also think of the expression. Once you’ve fretted a note, there’s little to do with that finger. Bending and hammer-ons maybe, but it’s nothing in comparison to what the picking hand does. The picking can change the volume, overdrive, pinch notes, muting and overtones depending on position. Also of course timing as already mentioned.
Traditionally, it was probably chosen because of finger picking though. A lot of classical music is based on very basic chord shapes while the picking hand does all the coordination of playing both bass and melody simultaneously. That requires a lot more rhythmic independence on the picking hand than the fretting hand.
Backward bycicle, SmarterEveryday.
I’ve done this with guitar on my early 20s. I’m righty and one day just decided to locked-in like Destin did to see what would happen. And like him it got to the point where something’s flipped and I could strum open/barre chord comfortably but didn’t get too far with melody though, picking hand is by miles much more awkward, orienting and holding the pick the right way is much more precise control than I thought. I could do decent enough legato to fool non-player.
Then I stopped for a week and it’s just gone, I didn’t become ambidextrous.
Her left handed dad - who grew up in a country which had no left handed things - wasn’t able to use the scissors.
That’s interesting to me. I’m a lefty who’s used to both types of scissors. That means I know how I need to pull sideways with the knuckle of my thumb in the right handed ones so they still cut well. But with the left handed ones I feel like I’m doing way less, I just pull and push up and down without needing the additional deliberate sideways pressure.
Be afraid, standard printer paper. Be very afraid.
Wow, I really thought most scissors were practically ambidextrous. What makes them chiral enough to limit usage?
When you squeeze the handles the blades press together. Using the wrong hand for most scissors it produces a small gap that prevents them from cutting the paper. It’ll just pinch it.
Try it, then try cutting again with the correct hand for your scissors. Odds are your scissors are not ambidextrous but you just never had a reason to discover this.
wouldn’t a more rigid and tighter pivot pin prevent this?
if so, I guess I don’t have a pair of scissors shitty enough for this to be a problem. I first tried one of my good scissors with both hands to see how it went, no discernible difference with left or right hand despite the scissors being ergonomically molded for right hand use. so I tried my pair of $2 scissors that have a noticeably loose pin and no handed molding on the grips, and I’m struggling to decide if the offhand use was actually worse by a couple percent or if it’s just placebo lol
You know how you can kind of pull the handles a certain way to make bad scissors work? Using them in the wrong hand is like the opposite of that. As you observed it’s less of an issue with decent scissors.
I needed to cut some rags today out of old t-shirts, so I did some more testing
it was definitely noticeable with the cheap scissors in the wrong hand if not compensated for, and even aside from actual performance, I can clearly see the blades spread apart when closing with regular form in the off hand. with compensation to push the blades together, they cut fine, but yeah that would be annoying to have to do all the time
with the decent fiskars scissors though, no difference at all
I am surprised by how the paper and envelope cutting tests I did yesterday showed no difference, though. I guess the paper is rigid enough to hold the blades together before they actually cut or something, whereas the fabric clear tries to get between and spread them
Hold them left-handed and you can’t see the point where the blades are cutting paper. You have to guess. Makes it harder to do a neat job.
They’re crossed the other way around. Ambidextrous scissors do not exist
They actually do, tend to be advertised as such. Example
These are still right-handed. The blades need to be crossed the other way for left-handed scissors. Making an ambidextrous scissor is physically impossible.
They are advertised as such, but the advertisement is a lie.
any product examples that aren’t Amazon crap?
Amazon product descriptions matching the actual function of the product is kind of rare
I’m also extremely surprised that it’s a thing.
100+ years ago when I was in elementary school I just used the lefty scissors even though I’m right handed because all the righty ones were fucked up from being used by a bunch of shitty unruly children that can only ruin stuff and there was only one real lefty in the grade and two in the whole school. If you don’t have some kind of condition it really isn’t that hard to just train your motor skills. I went to school with someone who was lefty but wrote right handed just to not get the smudge. Years later I worked with another one. Actually I’ve even used both types of scissors wrong handed in commit once you start or already holding something in the other hand scenarios. Its janky and kinda shit but you can do it with enough stats in dex or a buff item or something idk…
I need these in my life ffs being a lefty is a pain at times
I finally bought left-handed scissors at the ripe old age of 35. It’s amazing once you adjust to it. But you have to unlearn everything first. The “looking under to see where I cut” pose. The awkward painful reverse-grip to force the blades together. The fact that ergo handles are actually more comfortable than symmetric ones and not infinitely more painful.
