The McRideline

The McRideline is very much a core product of the Barras 3D operation. It is a jig used in the process of sharpening curved hair cutting scissors.

I am not going to claim it is an original idea as it has been inspired by the work of other sharpeners over in the USA. So this project is very much open source with the print files sitting over on Printables for you to download and make your own.

If you don’t want to roll your own then you can buy a fully built one in the online store HERE

If you aren’t a sharpener then you’ll have no idea what it does. For more expensive and better hair cutting scissors the back of the blades will be hollow ground. After you sharpen the scissors then the back of the blade will need de-burring and flattening to keep what is known as the rideline in good condition. With a normal scissor this is relatively easy as you use a flat water stone which gives you a nice flat back to the scissor.

Then some bright spark came up with the idea of curving hair cutting scissors so that curves are more easily created. Then someone else invented the labraoodle, groomers discovered curved scissors and there was a collective sigh of exasperation wrung out amongst the sharpeners that we all felt in the force.

We invented various methods to fix the rideline on scissors ranging from *

  • Trying to hold small water stones at the right angle by hand

  • Rubbing them on a kerbstone

  • Gluing sandpaper to an old drain pipe

This is when ideas of a jig to hold the scissors at a constant angle and then to hone them over a curved abrasive started to filter out. Various machines and jigs have appeared over the years.

None of them greatly appealed to me while I was getting barras blades up and running. Due to them being not very good and/or being quite expensive. I then saw a fully 3D printed machine in a facebook post which I didn’t like but it made me think i can do better.

With some parts i had knocking around and some locally sourced waterstones i built the Mk1 McRideline

*Only one of these was a lie

It was crap. The locally sourced stones where far too soft and feedback from a few other sharpeners who tried it out suggest the one piece arm was a bad idea.

The design slowly evolved using a plastic paper holder and then onto using some ruby stones sourced from the far east into the present machine. The arm gained a mid joint, it grew in length, it gained bearings. The frames gained heat set inserts and it evolved into the current machine. And it will evolve some more.

The basics will stay the same with a way of rapidly changing out the abrasives as that has been a major weakness of previous machines.