Eli5: Why is it almost impossible to use scissors with your less dexterous hand, especially for cutting items such as plastics and rubber?
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When you hold right-handed scissors in your right hand, you typically hold the thing you’re cutting in your left hand. This keeps it stable and held against the bottom blade of the scissors (which is on the left) allowing the top blade (the cutting blade on the right) to slice through it.
When you switch hands, the bottom blade is now on the outside and there is nothing on that same side to keep the paper steady. So when the top blade comes down, instead of cutting the paper, it just folds it up.
It’s because the action of using scissors requires the blades to be pushed together. Most scissors are right handed, so when you use them with your right hand there is a gentle force which pushes the blades together. Use right handed scissors with your left hand and you notice that the blades actually get slightly pushed apart. You can buy left handed scissors where the top blade is on the left and the bottom blade is on the right.
>Eli5: Why is it almost impossible to use scissors with your less dexterous hand, especially for cutting items such as plastics and rubber?
Scissors are inherently either right-handed or left-handed by design. If you use right-handed scissors in your left hand the natural direction of the pressure your fingers exert will push the shears **away** from each other instead of pushing them together like in your right hand.
If you want to use scissors with your left hand you need to use left-handed scissors, whether or not the left hand is your dominant one matters little.
As a left handed person it’s not only plastic or rubber it’s WVERYTHING even if I use my right hand with the right handed scissors IT DOESENT CUT. So I decided some years ago only using knives
It’s because you’re twisting the cutting edges away from each other instead of towards each other. Right handed scissors want to have each handle twisted clockwise, from the perspective of the person holding it, left handed counterclockwise.
You can hold them differently to mitigate this problem, with your thumb pointing down through the handle instead of up, and your fingers pointing up through the handle instead of down.
First time riding a bike?
First time swimming?
Same same, you arent used to it is all.
Fo a 30day challenge and use your non dominamt hand for all such things. You’ll see
When you use “standard” scissors with your right hand you are pulling (whether you realize it or not) the handles so that they keep the cutting edges close together. You do this by pulling with your fingers while pushing with your thumb. Once you switch to your left hand, that same technique will cause the cutting edges to gap away from beach other.
As a coping technique, some southpaw users have learned to pull with the thumb and push with the fingers. Others (like me) just use our right hand for scissors. I do have a pair of lefty scissors in the house. My (bad) habit is tying to use them with my right hand.
I’ve been cutting “wrong handed for years. With a quality scissors it’s not that big of a deal.
I’m left handed but use scissors with my right hand. Am I defective, lol?
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