When I first saw this easy kitchen hack, I envisioned someone rubbing their scissors blade across a sheet of aluminum foil as if it were a sharpening stone to try to sharpen the blade. People have a lot of confidence in aluminum foil, I thought. It’s surely too soft to sharpen even those soft and flimsy scissors blade you get on cheap kitchen shears or household scissors. But, no, that’s not the hack. The hack is to fold a sheet of aluminum foil several times to make a very thick piece and then cut through it with your scissors. Does this work? I’ll spare you the explanation as to how cutting thorough stuff is what made your scissors dull to begin with. The answer is no! of course this doesn’t work. Cutting through a thick wad of aluminum foil to sharpen your scissors is a dull idea.
What really happens when you try to cut through thickly folded aluminum foil with a pair of dull scissors is you get a duller pair of scissors. The thicker the aluminum foil is folded or wadded, the duller you will make your blade. Aluminum foil is softer than the steel used for scissor blades. Although many cheap scissors are not made with hardened steel, this doesn’t mean that aluminum is suddenly tought enough to sharpen them. On the other hand, a thick hunk of the stuff will dull the scissor blades as they try to force their way through it. To sharpen a blade, you have to remove material from the blade. Aluminum foil cannot do this. It can, however, blunt the thin edge of the blade.
Some sources claim that cutting through aluminum foil removes burrs or other material from the blade making the scissors “feel” sharper. Either they are sharper or they are not. A sharper pair of scissors will cut better. However, there are ways to objective test the sharpness of a scissor blade using a scientific instrument. Edge testers can be bought for professional or home use for a reasonable price an are handy for wood workers or professional sharpeners. Some more qualified individuals have gotten ahold of this myth and tested it, finding it to be as silly as it sounds. The YouTube channel Wood By Wright provides a useful video showing the results of cutting through aluminum foil with scissors. The host tests the edge of the blade with an edge tester and the results speak for themselves.
