Help!! How do you take care of your Felco shears?

My embarassing story is that I paid big bucks a couple of years ago for one and then was too scared to take it out of the package because all my shears always end up caked with gunk, rusty and dull. So finally this year I got brave and took out the new Felco, deadheaded a few flowers and did some major snipping this weekend to trim the frost-bitten perennials. Sure enough, there is now this blackish gunk on the blades. What am I supposed to do to make them nice and shiny again? Steel wool? Soap and water?

I knew I should have left them in the package. . .

:_|

Kinda like going to all the trouble to make a fancy dessert, then either looking at it forever, or eating it...good shears are to be used! The better the tool, the nicer it is to work with.

Shears will easily rust. After use, since you can easily spread diseases from one plant to another, it's a good idea to dip them in a bleach solution. Pour a tablespoon of bleach in a small bowl, add water, then dip the shears in that, between bushes, and when done. Then rinse, and wipe dry. I like to squirt my snippers with WD40. Then store them in a dry location.

Discoloration of the metal is normal. The steel reacts with plant juices, with bleach, with everything...but the WD40 will help prevent that. Or a light coat of oil (got a squirt can of car oil?)

To sharpen, when the blade no longer cuts things cleanly or as easily, just lightly run a small metal file along the edge, in one direction only.

Somewhere, maybe a tv gardening show, someone had this big wooden box of sand with motor oil poured in it. They stuck all their garden tools in that to coat with oil, plus the sand would help sharpen the edges of shovels and such...they said it kept all rust away.

Thanks Mulchy! So good to know they aren't ruined. Bleach, rinse, dry, WD40. I think I can do that.

You mean you are supposed to EAT those desserts?

Those Felcos should come apart for sharpening. When you sharpen the blade (only 1 blade gets sharpened)do NOT sharpen the flat side.

The best desserts not only look scrumptious, they taste heavenly. Unlike the halloween cake I made for the kids carnival at school this weekend...The gal who won it at the carnival asked me if she could just sit it on a shelf and keep it forever (it was a cool forest with spiders, 3 dimensional)...the decorations would have kept, as they were almost pure sugar, but not the cake, alas...

As for those shears...sitting in their package on a shelf keeps them forever, but then you don't get to see how exquisitely they handle (or not)...

As for shears, sometimes, the blade gets very hard to close as the little tightening bolt gets too snug, if that happens, just back it off a tiny bit til they open and close perfectly. If you cut something that is really sappy, you might need a solvent to clean the sap off. As for taking them apart to sharpen, I don't do that. I just open the shears wide, and run a tiny little file along the blade with the fine edge that looks like a knife edge. And avoid cutting metal with them! Someone use my shears to snip wire with once grrrrrrrrr...talk about ruining a nice, sharp cutting tool quickly, left all kinds of gouges in the cutting edge.