WO2004039543A1

WO2004039543A1 - Safety scissors

Info

Publication number: WO2004039543A1
Application number: PCT/GB2003/004701
Authority: WO
Inventors: Cyril Edwin Gallie
Original assignee: Individual
Current assignee: Individual
Priority date: 2002-10-30
Filing date: 2003-10-30
Publication date: 2004-05-13
Anticipated expiration: 2005-04-30
Also published as: GB0225208D0; AU2003276431A1; GB2394687A; GB2394687B

Abstract

A pair of scissors having two blades (1, 2), one of which (1) being shorter than the other (2), the extreme tip of the shorter blade (1) preferably being curved (8) whereby objects positioned between the curved tip (8) of the shorter blade (1) and the longer blade (2) when the blades are closed are pushed out of the nip being formed between said blades (1, 2) as they are closed. Such scissors reduce the risk of cutting the user’s fingers during use compared with conventional scissors having blades of substantially equal lengths.

Description

Safety Scissors

This invention concerns safety scissors.

Scissors have long been recognised as being potentially dangerous instruments, and numerous proposals have been made hitherto for improving their safety. US5379521, for example, gives a review of various proposals for safety scissors, this document being particularly concerned with safety scissors having a flat and generally U-shaped shield surrounding one of the scissor blades, preventing direct contact by the user with the cutting edge or the tip of the blade, and a flat shield for the other blade.

Other proposals for safety scissors include the use of projections from each of the two scissor blades which prevent fingers from being cut but allow fibrous materials to pass between them so that they can be cut, for example as disclosed in US5195245 and US5297342. A further proposal in JP8299619 is the use of an overload mechanism in one of the scissor blades which releases the cutting force if resistance to cutting is met, for example if a finger is placed between the blades. Despite these earlier proposals, safety scissors have not found widespread use amongst professional users, for example hair dressers, due to the safety devices restricting both access to the blades by the object being cut and visibility of the cut being made. Furthermore, the use of an overload mechanism such as is described in JP8299619 would be unsatisfactory for many professional users due to the mechanism operating during normal cutting operations.

Hair dressing cutting techniques can reduce the incidence of injury with conventional scissors without safety devices, for example by cutting hair with the scissor blades parallel to and behind the user's fingers and with the blade substantially tangential to the body of the person having their hair cut. However, there are instances where cutting is intentionally effected with the blades pointing towards the user's hands through which hair to be cut is positioned prior to the cut and also towards the head and neck of the person having their hair cut. In these cases there is a real, and indeed actual, risk of injury both to the hands of the hair dresser and to the head and neck of the person having their hair cut. However, hitherto proposed safety scissors would be unsuitable for such cutting for various reasons such as those set out above.

According to the present invention there is provided a pair of scissors having two blades, one of which being shorter than the other.

Scissors in accordance with the present invention have been used to cut hair using them with the blades pointing towards the fingers of the user and without cutting the user's hands under conditions where substantial injury had been caused using conventional hairdresser's scissors having two pointed blades of substantially equal length.

The extreme tip of the shorter blade is preferably curved whereby objects positioned between the curved tip of the shorter blade and the longer blade when the blades are closed are pushed out of the nip being formed between said blades as they are closed, and the curved portion is preferably substantially tangential to the cutting edge of the blade.

The curvature of the tip of the shorter blade is preferably substantially circular, but it can have other curved shapes.

The longer blade can be substantially pointed, for example similar to conventional hairdresser's scissors, or its tip can be curved, for example with a curvature similar to that of the shorter blade.

An embodiment of safety scissors in accordance with the present invention will now be described with reference to the accompanying drawings in which: -

Fig. 1 is a side elevation of the embodiment with the scissor blades part closed; and

Fig. 2 is a part cut away view of the embodiment with the scissor blades closed.

The illustrated pair of scissors consists of two blades 1 and 2 having respective cutting edges 3 and 4, the blades being pivotally connected in conventional manner by a pivot screw 5. Operating handles 6 and 7 respectively enable the blades 1 and 2 to be closed to effect cutting.

As can be seen more clearly from Fig. 2, one of the blades 1 is shorter than the other blade 2. The result of this is that when the blades 1 and 2 are closed using the handles 6 and 7, extreme tip 8 of blade 1 and extreme tip 9 of blade 2 do not coincide and so a nip is not formed between the extreme tips 8 and 9 of the blades 1 and 2. Since no nip is formed between the extreme tips 8 and 9 of the blades 1 and 2, inadvertent cutting, for example of a hand, at the extreme tips 8 and 9 is avoided. In other words, the extra length of the blade 2 compared with the blade 1 serves as a distancing piece which distances the position of closure of the tip 8 with the cutting edge 4 away from an object when cutting is effected with the blades pointing towards a user's hands or towards part of the body of a third party.

In addition to the blade 1 being shorter than the blade 2, the tip 8 of the blade 1 is curved whereas the tip 9 of the blade 2 can be substantially pointed, for example as is common with hair dressing scissors. The curvature of the tip 8 is preferably such that if a finger, for example, is inadvertently caught between the tip 8 and the cutting edge 4 of the blade 2 as the blades 1 and 2 are closed, the tip 8 will pass the finger concerned without cutting it. In addition, it is generally preferred that the cutting edge 3 of the blade 1 is substantially tangential to the curve of the tip 8.

The curvature of the tip 8 can form part of a circle or some other curved shape.

Claims

1. A pair of scissors having two blades, one of which being shorter than the other.

2. A pair of scissors according to claim 1, wherein the extreme tip of the shorter blade is curved whereby objects positioned between the curved tip of the shorter blade and the longer blade when the blades are closed are pushed out of the nip being formed between said blades as they are closed.

3. A pair of scissors according to claim 2, therein the curved portion is substantially tangential to the cutting edge of the blade.

4. A pair of scissors according claim 2 or claim 3, wherein the curve of the tip of the shorter blade is substantially circular.

5. A pair of scissors according to any of the preceding- claims, wherein the longer of the two blades is substantially pointed.

6. A pair of scissors substantially as herein described with reference to the accompanying drawings.