Heat Treatment
< Heat Treatment>
There are three main factors to decide the quality of beauty shears.
- Material 2. Heat Treatment 3. Craftsmanship
Out of the three, the level of heat treatment technology is the hardest to judge by bare eyes.
First of all, high-quality materials are needed to make high-quality shears.
Second, proper heat treatment technology is needed to make the material have the best characteristics for shears.
Third, shears must be made by highly skilled and experienced craftsmen.
Some shears go dull within a week, but some can stay sharp for six months or more. Highly skilled craftsmanship can give the shears an excellent cutting feeling. However, the materials and the heat treatment allow the shears to last longer, regardless of the cutting feeling.
Various heat treatments are used for different types of metals and their usage.
Different heat treatments can change the hardness and abrasion even in the same metals.
Also, the level of heat treatment skills is different in various countries.
Japan, Korea, and Germany are in the top tier when looking only at the level of heat treatment for shears, while China and Pakistan are considered 10 to 20 years behind them.
Most shear factories in Korea and Japan don't have heat treatment facilities. As a result, the materials need to be sent to factories specialized in heat treatment. Expensive high-tech equipment is useless without experts to properly handle those machines, so only a few factories worldwide have heat treatment facilities.
Most of the time, cheap shears that look high quality do not go through proper heat treatment or are made with low-quality materials. Stylists will likely have trouble with these shears even if they pay high prices. Therefore, advice from an expert is needed for beginners.
The following shows commonly used vacuum heat treatments in Korea and Japan.
<Heat Treatment>
- Heat treatments involve the usage of heating or chilling to harden or soften metals.
< Quenching>
- Quenching is the process of heating metals to an extremely high temperature and then cooling them rapidly.
- This process makes ferrous metals harder and non-ferrous metals softer.
<Tempering>
- Tempering is reheating metals to a high temperature and then to a low temperature.
- Tempering makes metals more ductile and tough.
< Subzero treatment >
- Subzero treatment is a process of cooling metals to a shallow temperature.
- This process enhances the metal's wear resistance strength and makes the metal harder.
