History of the XZACTA SHEARS & SCISSORS SHARPENING SYSTEM & MACHINES

      Hello, I am Ryan Parrish. I have always been fascinated with sharpening.  I could get a knife razor sharp when I was 9 years old.  My granddaddy taught me on his front porch in Dothan, Alabama.  My father taught me how to sharpen axes, saws, and other tools.

         I was a working hair stylist for 34 years.  About 1990, I started learning how to sharpen scissors, after having many of my expensive shears ruined by “professional scissor sharpeners”.  I bought a $3.00 pair of scissorS at Sally Beauty Supply and $1.00 stone from a hardware store.  That’s how it all began.  It wasn’t long until I was sharpening totally by hand my hair styling scissors.  And admittedly it wasn’t all that great back then, but it was still better than what I had been paying for before.   I started studying metals and sharpening when I got my first computer.  I was already sharpening for friends and some co-workers.  Everything I knew at this point was trial and error.

      Thru the years, I have had training and equipment from two professional scissor sharpening companies.  In addition, I have thousands of hours and/or dollars invested in books, videos, the internet, etc.  Still, I learned most of what I know the hard and long way thru trial, error, and practice.  Fortunately, with the Xzacta Shears Scissor Sharpening Machine Training, you are going to learn in five days what took me years and a lot of money to learn.  You will be among the elite in the scissor sharpening world. I am often asked how I came up with the idea for the Xzacta Guide System (Machine).  Necessity is the mother of invention.  I had invested a lot of money in a machine from a company whose name I won’t mention.  Admittedly I got snowed by the presentation.  I lost all my money and even sent their machine back in like new condition (this was in the contract).  I had been using their machine full time for about three weeks.  I thought at this time that I had the best….wrong!  One morning I was sharpening a pair of 4.5 inch shears with a radius of about 500 mm.  When I got done, I could actually see the considerable angle change along the blades.  Yes, they were sharp, but I was sick.  This machine, because of the 800 mm guide bar, changes the angle along the blades on shears that do not have an 800 mm radius.  In the real world, there are many, many scissors that are not manufactured with an 800 mm radius.  On top of that, most scissor sharpeners destroy it. So, bottom line, the more variance from 800 mm, the more the angle change…not a perfect machine as I had thought.   I didn’t work for three weeks.  I was actually depressed.  I just kept thinking, “There has got to be a better way”.  “There can’t be…someone would have done it already.”  I still didn’t give up.  I sat at my dining room table doing drawings and sketches for several nights.  I don’t know how or why, all the sudden, the Xzacta Scissor Sharpening Machine was born on paper.  I still didn’t believe it would work even though it looked like it would.  I went to my friend, Ralf, and showed him my crude drawings.  Ralf is pretty sharp when it comes to mechanical things.  I said, “Do you think this will work?”  He said, “I don’t see why not”.  That’s all I needed to hear. Two weeks later, on a Friday afternoon, the last parts that I needed to build the first prototype came via UPS.  I worked all Friday night, got about 3 hours sleep Saturday night, and sharpened the first pair of scissors at about 3:30 a.m. Monday morning.  It really did exactly what it was supposed to do.  It was literally my dream come true.  I was so exhausted and excited that I couldn’t get to sleep until around 11:00 a.m. Monday.  I must have been dehydrated, because I didn’t wake up until 2:00 p.m. Tuesday afternoon.  I still had my clothes on and shoes.  You can guess what I did?  Well yeh…after the bathroom I mean.  I ran to my dad’s barn and sharpened another pair of scissors.  It wasn’t a dream after all.  The Xzacta scissor sharpening guide machine was very, very real.       

        I love scissor sharpening now.  At last I have the best scissor sharpening machine that is accurate and will honor scissors manufacturers’ specifications.  It will sharpen shears of any radius and maintain a constant angle along the blade.  It will sharpen convex (Japanese style) or beveled shears.  And it will do curved shears with the same accuracy. It will sharpen right or left handed shears. This scissor sharpening machine has been needed by shears sharpener’s and hair stylists for a long time.  For more information, please visit www.XzactaShears.com  For prices click on "Newsletters". You will be glad you did.  We have some outstanding shears also. 

Are you sincerely interested in the best scissor sharpening machines?  Then I'll see you in Class.

Xzacta Shears LLC