WASA Red Kitchen Shears
These kitchen scissors are part of a (perhaps imagined) memory. One of my grandparents owned the perfect pair of kitchen shears. Used to slice apart meat and bone, these shears are just perfect and balanced in every way.
Eventually I found them – I think. The WASA Inox shears are like holding that memory. They are perfectly balanced and have a pleasing weight. They move smoothly and confidently and cut through damn near everything. My pair spends half its life in the kitchen and the other half in the shop.
They are supposed to be a multi-tool, with serrated jaws for opening jars and even a screwdriver for…screwing and unscrewing poultry? And they have a red coating. That flakes off with alarming ease.
Ignore all that and focus on what’s important. These scissors are insanely good at scissoring. They are worth the $80 or whatever they cost. If I lost this pair, I would buy another in moments. I got mine from The Best Brushes.
Editor’s note: Be wary of The Best Brushes…so many nice things.
The “screwdriver” should tighten up loose pot & pan handles, in a pinch.
It’s also useful for prying open the lids on Lyle’s treacle tins.
Came here to say this. Anytime you would use a coin or butter knife as a screwdriver or prybar, that is the perfect time to use the screwdriver at the end of the shears. Great for potlids, opening stuck canning jars, popping open tins, etc. These live in my kitchen while trauma shears live in my workshop.
Shuweeeet! I can’t tell you how pairs of “orange handled” junk shears I’ve gone through over the years. Oy vey! So I did a search on eBay a few years ago and snagged just such a pair for less than… Since then, I’ve tried to get another pair but they disappear quickly off auction sites apparently because people that know… know. LOL
You missed the hammer on one finger loop. It works about as well as the screwdriver does for tightening eye glasses screws. I replaced them with ‘Mondial’ kitchen shears at a similar price these days – easily separated for cleaning, functional screwdriver for loose knobs, functional crown seal bottle opener, haven’t tried the jar opener, bone cutting notch near the pivot point that at least works on poultry, no hammer. I haven’t killed mine in 30+ years but a friend used a pair I gave him for cutting cork floor tiles and loosened the joint, I should take a ball pein hammer over and tighten them up, even if they still work.
You missed the bottle opener in front of the serrated jaw. Perfect for that cold beverage once the tools have been put away, or the harried cook when making the family meal.
I wonder if they are easily sharpened?
Yes, they split apart, so you can sharpen them like a knife on your whetstone, Spyderco Sharpmaker, etc.
And then there is that little flat edge on one handle for hammering!
These kitchen shears seem to be identical to shears I have from a couple other German cutlery brands.
One of the shears I have is branded by F. Dick, and the other I believe is branded by Wusthof, although the current Wusthof version of the shears seems to be a newer, more streamlined design with similar functionality.
I presume the same manufacturer makes all of the same shears and just supplies them to the different manufacturers.
The actual design origin seems to ho back to a US Patent listing an Arthur Voss of New York as the inventor, and assigning the patent to a Graef & Schmidt Inc., a US cutlery manufacturer.
Graef & Schmidt had their US assets siezed in 1943 due to alledged connects with Germany during WWII.
The G&S manufacturing assets were then sold to Revlon after WWII, which Revlon used to supply nail clippers, and hair shears, and other beauty products whose production they had had to outsource previously.
I have no clue what happened with the kitchen shear production, but my parents had a USA made version of the shears in the 1980s, and I doubt the shears would have predated the 1960s.
The US patents is US2131395A.
No, I believe they all make their own. It’s a generic design, and I guess it’s difficult to tell who was the first to make it. Zwilling has been making these for over 75 years. Pretty much every single German company in the edge tool/cutlery business comes from either Solingen (WASA, Wüsthoff, Zwilling, etc.) or the greater Stuttgart area (F. Dick is from Esslingen, Fuchs, the maker of Peter Follansbee’s beloved hewing hatchet, is from Bad Canstatt, and many, many others), and they all seem to have some form of connection to one another. A bit like the six degrees of Kevin Bacon, only it’s more like 2-3 degrees.
The serrated jaws are not for opening jars… it’s a nut cracker!
Editor: I put the $150 fanny pack on my wishlist.