22/10/2025
Im saying this all the time good man for this
In response to my post yesterday that created quite a debate, I will try to explain from my perspective as a long experienced professional sharpener, as someone who designs and builds his own successful and highly respected brand of scissors, as a member of a grooming family that has run an accredited grooming school for 30+ years and as someone whoโs Mum has been grooming for 50+ years, with 2 fully qualified grooming teachers as daughters. So I guess I understand the Industry as well or better than most.
This isnโt about scissors, thatโs a whole different debate, itโs about using branded v Temu/Ali Express/Amazon/Cheap clipper blades.
I started out as an apprentice Electrician 45 years ago working with my Dad, he had originally apprenticed at Avro (British Aerospace now), his first job was wiring the Bomb Bays on the RAF Avro Vulcan heavy bomber. He told me of how as an apprentice a colleague was caught using normal wire cutters to strip the cable ends, rather than the specific wire st*****rs. His colleague was sacked on the spot! Yes the wire cutters did a similar job, they were cheaper and arguably faster to use, however they could also cut a few strands of wire in the cable, which increased the resistance in the cable which potentially could cause heat build up and lots of other issues. It was all about quality and safety, it was drilled into those young electrical engineers and myself that you use the right tool, a quality tool and cheap just doesnโt cut it.
Fast forward only a couple years and a girlfriend at the time bought me a cheap socket set for my birthday, I had to appear grateful and it was obvious that said girlfriend had no idea what was a good/bad socket set. A week or two later when working on my car I had lost my usual top quality 10mm socket and had to resort to the one in the birthday present cheap socket set, it split open as soon as I tried to torque the bolt up resulting in my losing most of the skin on my knuckles down to the bone. I was off work for about 3-4 weeks!!! It was a valuable lesson
So as far as Iโm concerned I NEVER use cheap tools, if I can get quality tools cheap thatโs a different story BUT as with so many things in life you get what you pay for, products are usually more expensive for a reason, better design, more durable, stronger, faster, easier and usually safer too.
The biggest expense in manufacturing a clipper blade is the steel, followed by the hardware (springs, sockets, screws).
Quality steel is hellish expensive these days, but itโs the steel predominantly that determines how long a blade retains its โsharpnessโ. Good steel is harder, more durable and cuts longer. Cheap steel is softer and blunts far quicker. Poor quality tension springs lose their ability to keep the required blade tension, poor quality sockets loosen or crack causing blades to sit incorrectly or rattle noisily. Cheap screws strip threads and rust making them impossible for a sharpener to remove in some cases.
Absolutely no Clipper blade manufacturer gives a damn how easy/difficult it is to sharpen a blade, they donโt make them to be sharpened specifically. In fact some make it as awkward as possible! Because if it canโt be sharpened or costs more it matters not to them because they want you to buy a new blade each time.
Reading the comments from the previous post it seems many buy โthrow awayโ blades because you say you canโt find a decent sharpener, whilst I would be one of the first to agree that there are lots of cowboy grinders out there ruining equipment there are also hundreds of hard working, highly experienced and damn good sharpeners out there too. A quick post or chat with your local groomer colleagues should help you find one.
Lots of you say you canโt send blades off for sharpening?? I get hundreds in by post every week and offer a 48hr turnaround, there are a few others similar so itโs not that hard. If you donโt have spares to last you a few days then thatโs another debate again.
Using cheap low quality blades is fine I guess if youโre simply throwing them away, my original point was I get dozens and dozens of โjunkโ blades and the amount is increasing every month. The fact is it cost me and every other sharpener far more to sharpen and maintain a cheap blade than a good quality branded one. We often have to replace all the hardware (around ยฃ3-4 per blade) and thatโs if the steel is actually hard enough and sufficient quality to actually be sharpened. It can take 2 or 3 times as long and double the cost per blade to sharpen it for you. Often they donโt work first time so the sharpening process has to be repeated or we have to diagnose the issue.
Itโs the equivalent of one of your customers bringing in a matted to hell Doodle every 6 months and expecting you to make it look like it stepped out of the Crufts ring, in the same time and at the same cost as one of your 6 week regulars ๐ซฃ๐คทโโ๏ธ
Training and education are a huge problem in this industry, a lot of groomers are untrained or poorly trained, many good schools still donโt cover equipment or maintenance adequately or correctly because in lots of cases the trainers donโt know either ๐ณ
Rarely do student groomers get proper advice on how to identify quality equipment, what actually constitutes quality and lots have no idea when it comes to blade maintenance. They are too busy trying to sell their students cheap crap at high prices to maximise the schoolโs profits.
How well a blade works consistently is directly correlated to how well you maintain it and your clippers. I know that at least 70% of groomers donโt maintain their blades correctly, so yes youโre going to get issues. How do you maintain them correctly if you were never taught? Good question, call or text me! If youโre a school I can easily produce an online video for you to show students, just ask!
Good blades and bad blades?
Iโm not going to produce a list of what i consider junk blades, I donโt have the time or patience to get involved in legal issues. However you get what you pay for, if itโs cheap itโs cheap for a reason!!
The big brands are big brands because they have produced quality products for a long time, they are more expensive because they use quality materials, pay decent wages and invest in engineering development. Every company experiences quality control issues occasionally but generally speaking Oster, Wahl, Heiniger, Aesculap etc are a safe bet. There are some smaller brands such as Alpha and Mastercut, that are good quality, fairly priced and have lots of happy customers too.
Yes you can buy cheap blades and save a few quid in theory, but they are not going to stay sharp or last years (when maintained correctly) like a branded or respected and established brand. A good blade should last years and get 10+ sharpening cycles from it, thatโs far more cost effective, environmentally aware and far better business sense than throw away in my opinion.
Itโs one of the many reasons I donโt have my own brand of blades, Iโve been asked a gazillion times, Iโve been offered hundreds of options from manufacturers to stick my brand name on, I wonโt because Iโve not yet found any I would be happy to associate my name or brand with ๐คทโโ๏ธ
That old adage of โBuy cheap, buy twiceโ
Blade maintenance video:
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1EpiYSsD1X/?mibextid=wwXIfr
