We don’t have a great place for “general crafting supplies”, so folks often end up in textiles looking for various tools. The main one of these being a pair of scissors.
The fabric scissors in textiles will be made dull very quickly if used for cutting paper, so we now have a defined place (two actually!) for non-fabric scissors. The first is directly in front of you as you enter the room, on the side of the storage cubby:
If you’re using these scissors elsewhere in Asmbly, please ensure that they are returned promptly so members aren’t tempted to use the fabric scissors for paper etc.
I thought about doing so but didn’t want to run tests on the plastic- if you’d like to do so (especially since you can do in on the blade) I’d greatly appreciate it!
When Jordan trained me to teach the Vinyl Class, that was one of the big takeaways! Don’t even THINK about using the fabric scissors for anything other that fabric.
Papers are made using wood pulp (obviously) but also other compounds used for bleaching, raising the ph to make it neutral, etc. These are largely powdered minerals.
Fabric is made from much softer fibers, at worst plant fiber that’s been beaten into submission (cotton), animal hair, or synthetic fibers- all processed/designed to be as soft and as fine as possible (yay human skin contact).
The softer a material is, the sharper a blade must be to cut it. Ie: cutting tomato, or how tin snips will cut through sheet metal like butter but cannot cut paper. Likewise, the harder a material is the faster it will dull a blade (especially when a substantial percentage of it is actually powdered minerals).
TLDR: dull blades can’t cut floppy stuff, hard stuff dulls blade, paper is harder than fabric and full of what amounts to rock that dull the blade VERY quickly in comparison to fabric, which is design to be as soft as humanly possible.
As an aside, I’ve since moved the fabric scissors into their own drawer with ample signage that the scissors within should only be used on fabric. This should resolve the “ui/ux” issue here from both ends.
