A good pair of scissors is a joy. The ones I inherited from my mother were just that, and they cut wonderfully. That is, they cut wonderfully until I left them outside on the trellis for more than a year.

The shame of it all is that I didn’t even need to use them in the first place. I took them out to use to cut drip irrigation tape, and I’ve since learned that a box cutter works just as well. But for whatever reason, I took those good scissors out to Veg Hill, placed them on top of a treated yellow pine 4 x 4, and left them exposed to the rain, wind, cold, heat, and sun for nearly two years. By the time I discovered them, they were badly rusted, almost disgusting, although they still had a decent edge on them.

I had no idea whether it would help, but I decided to give them a go with my hand-held grinder using the scrub brush attachment. Not only do they look much better; the cleaning off of the rust also helped them operate and cut better too.

I don’t make any pretense that Mama’s scissors are “good as new.” They’re not. That two years of neglect took a toll from which they will never fully recover. However, they were unusable, and now they’re usable again. For us, where money to buy a new pair of scissors seems harder to come by each year, that’s a clear win.