Having some good scissors in the shop is often overlooked. Cutco make a kitchen shears called their super shears, found here that are amazing. Not only do they cut paper and your standard everyday fair, but they are not troubled in the least cutting vinyl, leather, thin gauge metals as well as a host of other materials. In this episode I also give a sneak peek at next week’s project, a knife from a table saw insert plate. In last weeks project it would have been a whole lot nicer if I had made the tooth fairy box opening big enough for a few quarters. Do you have manual dexterity or do you know how to test for it? That is something I need to remind myself to think about when dealing with people who are new to the craft of woodworking and making.
Cutco scissors / Super Shears
2 Responses
Hi, Nick. As always, very insightful, useful and entertaining minutes with you (and, of course, Jay). Concerning dexterity— One of the things I came to realize in my years both in the military and in the world of rehabilitative and career counseling in the corrections industry is that dexterity (in its many forms) and hand/eye coordination are universes apart, even though they both embrace some of the same combinations of senses and abilities. There are many jugs, apperatii (my word) and exercises to test both but the one that served me best and most often led to more accurate and consistent determinations is a simple 2×6 “T” stand with different sizes of bolts and nuts solidly affixed to both vertical surfaces and some form of container (I used wooden boxes) on each side with the matching nuts or bolts or distractors that the testee would try to match in a given length of time. To combine both manual and sensory dexterity and hand/eye coordination, we would randomly colorize both the fixed and the loose hardware so that the correct combination wasn’t necessarily color coordinated. Fun stuff to administer and, from all input, fun to do. Little kids love it, too, so its a multi-useful exercise. Looking forward to more of your input and looking forward to the continued saga of Nick and Jay. :). Larry
thanks Larry – that does seem like a useful and fun way to improve dexterity – something I would have never thought of