Wandering around my favourite place, a hardware store, I came across a couple of Fiskars shear products. I would never give up a sale, and these were indeed a that. A scant $10 later, the Fiskars ShopCut shears were mine.
FormThe ShopCut is a pair of medium duty, spring loaded shears. They are scaled for medium to large size hands and measure 8" from butt to tip, with a cutting blade length of 2.25". The lack of finger holes means you can use these shears with gloves and are able to pick these up with either hand easily. One of blades is coated with black TiNi while the other blade is a uncoated stainless.
The ShopCut come with a very tight fitting scabbard/sheath that has a plastic belt clip.
LooksBeing a Fiskars product, to my dismay (I prefer all black anything), it is emblazoned with Fiskars orange. A common design tactical used by many tool designers is to use colour to indicate points of human interaction. On large tools, it's makes finding on switches, adjustment hardware and other points of interest easy to find. The ShopCut follows this design method, colouring the thumb release in Fiskars orange. The orange injection moulded handle encase a very grippy elastomer with effective grip pattern. The ShopCut is easy to find in almost any condition due to the colour.
The ShopCut is slim and the profile of the scissor is non threatening.
Function
Squeezing the ShopCut is a pleasure, the spring is calibrated on the heavy side, but just barely. This means extended use won't result in fatigued hand and the lack of thumb and fingers holes means there is no external pressure points being hit. This also make the ShopCut ambidextrous.
The black blade has mild serrations, gripping and slicing through almost anything it came up against. I cut through heavy Cordura, light tin, strapping, and heavy cardboard and the ShopCut snickered *slchink slchink* as it cut.
The thumb lock is easy to engage and disengage, but not so easy that it flops open.
At it's widest extension, the handles pull apart 5". Perfectly acceptable distance for some with medium sized hands to bare down on.
The built in wire cutters are a bit of let down, not for performance, but for the accessibility. Located closest to the pivot, the notch is only accessible if you push the handles further than the the 5" the spring pushes the handles apart. This is likely due to a couple of factors, if the notch was any higher, it would interrupt the smooth cutting area, and the closer to pivot, the higher the shearing power the user can apply.
There are other designs that incorporate a wire cutter on the other handle side of the pivot, and these shears could of benefitted with that design.
Carry PotentialThe included sheath/scabbard/holsters is VERY tight. So tight that it takes some effort to get the ShopCut into and out of it. This is because the handle flares out near the top. Since I'll likely make my own sheath, and would never wear it on my belt, this isn't so much of an issue.
The Shopcut has no landyard loop, and no means of clipping it to a bag or a tool belt.
MatchupIf you own other Fiskars products, these matchup very well. The black is nice, the orange is..orange. I plan to keep these on my desk so I can cut up things, so I don't favor the bright orange. It's a personal choice however.
Finale
Pros:
1. Inexpensive
2. Backed by Fiskars Lifetime Warrenty
3. Nice balance, weight, spring pressure and size.
Cons:
1. Scabbard is too tight
2. Wire cutting notch is a little awkward to use
3. Only one blade is TiNi coated.
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