Shun Kitchen Shears

I test drove many, many products by every name brand while shopping for kitchen shears, and the moment I lifted these shears out of the box and held them in my hands, I knew the search for meat and poultry shears was over. It was one of those "So this is the dining room" moments.

These are the Rolls Royce of kitchen shears. They are beefy enough to use on chicken bones and include a bone notch for that purpose, but are relatively lightweight and incredibly comfortable to use. The blades are extremely tough and sharp; the blade action is sublimely smooth. My only quibble with these shears is that I would prefer the blade tips be a tad sharper, but that is a minor quibble since these shears are dedicated for meat and poultry; I have other shears with smaller, sharper blade tips if I need them.

If you don't need to trim meat and poultry, these shears may be overkill for you. I also own both Fiskars and Victorinox kitchen shears and can unhesitatingly recommend them both for general kitchen use, although the Victorinox shears do not come apart for cleaning. In my humble opinion, the Shun shears are the ONLY general purpose kitchen shears on the market to use with poultry. If you do much trimming of meats or butchering of poultry, buy these shears!

(A cautionary note: Shun and Kershaw are now the same company. Please don't even consider buying the less expensive Shun or Kerhsaw "Taskmaster" shears before going to a store and comparing the two by holding them in your hands and testing them. The difference in the quality between the "Taskmaster" and these shears is night and day.)

When trying to decide whether or not to purchase these shears I wanted to see some reviews but there weren't any. I decided to buy them anyway and I just got them today so I wanted to leave feedback in case anyone is in the same boat, even though I haven't really used them too much. I'll start off by saying I'm a man with average sized hands.

First, these have a weight to them that my other kitchen shears Chicago Cutlery and Wustoff don't have, most likely because they use metal through the handle as you can see in the picture. The handles are made with a rubber-like material that is very easy to grip, wet or dry. They feel better in my hands than the other 2 sets I have, mainly because they have exactly enough space for all 4 of my fingers. They are extremely smooth out of the box and *very* precise. I say this because when I took them out of the box I pulled them apart to inspect them closer. I then tried to put them back together and wasn't able to. After a few minutes of fooling around with them I realized there was the tiniest little spec of dust on 1 of the blades. After removing it the blades snapped back together perfectly and feel as solid as ever.

I'll add more feedback after I use them for a little while but I've got to say, so far I've very impressed and seem to be worth the extra money they are definitely shun quality.

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As I get older, (way too fast), I find myself slower and less sure when cutting awkward items in the kitchen; like taking out a chicken or worse, a turkey backbone. A cut I used to make easily as doing a brass zipper hangs and I find myself trying to force pry a sharp chef's knife tip through bone joints. With the strength I'm putting into it, all it takes is one slip and the knife becomes a dangerous wild edge.

I've watched cooking shows with interest where the chef grabs a pair of scissors and snips safely through these same bony sections. Only when I've checked out the poultry snips in various stores, I've thought them uninspiring and sometimes horrid. Some are cheap stamped steel, some were flimsy, and others were polished or chromed but never meant to be real tools. After fifty years of using cutlery and slowly upgrading to high quality knives I've learned to be leery of steel marketed to be showy but not truly designed for efficient work.

Currently I only own one Shun knife, but I do admit to lusting for more of their knives. Unless Shun is terrifically marked down I just don't have an excuse to retire a Wusthof. I will spring for a Shun to fill a void though.

Truth be told, my Shun scissors arrived today and I really haven't used them yet. I was disappointed to find them in a blister pack and I only checked into Amazon to verify they were the right pair. A blister pack definitely cheapens them, handling the scissors convinced me though; easily twice as beefy as other poultry shears I`ve handled.

Like:

Heavy through the handle solid steel, short blades with long handles contributing to great leverage (think tin snips). Easy disassembly and cleaning, cuts everything I've used it on. I'm defrosting chicken right now so I can try them out in the kitchen later on.

Not so great:

The snips are finished a little rough. Edges not meant to be sharp are sharp, grinder marks are left on the cutting edges. I used a diamond hone and rounded the sharp corners and sharpened the cutting edges till the grinder marks were gone.

Dislike:

All right, maybe I was expecting too much, but the steel used in these scissors is not a hard knife steel. Grinder marks that should have taken an hour or more to remove if I was removing them from a wood chisel, were removed in less than ten minutes. This steel is soft relative to good cutlery steel. I suspect there was a tradeoff in utilizing rustproof stainless versus rust resistant high carbon steel. I'd rather Shun designed these for people who care about their tools instead of the fools who'd leave blood or salt on them. Well, I touch up or sharpen even my best knives every use, I guess I can retouch the edge of these scissors frequently too.

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I bought these scissors around March of 2012. I've got the Ken Onion 10 inch chef's knife, the 7" santoku, a couple paring knives, sharpening stone and a bamboo slot block to hold them all. I bought these scissors to go into the front of the block and match my set. The only reason I bought this pair of scissors was because of the good reviews by the others and because of the brand.

These are not good reasons to buy this pair of scissors. Out of the box they cannot cut plastic bags which is one of the primary things I do when I open frozen salmon, veggies, etc. The tolerance they put into the connector holding the two sides together is too great.

Additionally the handles are NOT made with as advertised on this page with Ebony-black PakkaWood. It's just cheap plastic.

Finally, the leverage for cutting through food is not that great because they have the focal point so far from the hand. If you don't have strong, big hands like mine you will not be able to effectively use these scissors. My wife cannot use them.

I'm stuck with these because I did not return them within the 30 days, but there's much better out there especially for this price.

These scissors do not match the quality of the Ken Onion Shun line of cutlery.

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The Shun Shears cut through the backbone of a chicken as though it was butter. After years of working on a computer, my hands have lost a lot of strength. These shears are very helpful. They are well-designed and easily come apart for cleaning. They are pricey, but worth every penny!

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