Sheep shearing

[Moses Yoder]

If anyone is familiar with sheep shearing, especially vintage tools for shearing sheep, I would be interested in having a conversation with them. I got my dad's sheep shearing tools and know nothing about it. It is just a handle with a large number of cutters.

[Dan Hintz]

I've seen it done, but that's about it. Takes a skillful hand to do it without cutting the sheep, as well as being quick enough not to traumatize them. Nowadays they lead them into a pen that provides gentle clamping pressure, but doing it by hand is still done.

[Moses Yoder]

My dad fell off a barn roof he was painting in the late '50s or early '60s. He broke both wrists, was in the hospital for about a week. The hospital bill was $300; my mom's dad (my parents were not married at the time) loaned him the money to pay the bill. He paid him back by starting a sheep shearing business, shearing sheep for fifty cents each. He paid the money back in about 3 months. This handpiece and knives that I got are the tools he used to do this.

[David G Baker]

Sheep shearing is not a profession that I would want to go into. I watched it done by a pro back in the '50s and it was a lot of hard physical labor. I am sure that the techniques have improved considerably since then though as Dan wrote. Try a search for video on Youtube.

[Steve Rozmiarek]

Is it a shear or a knife? I know nothing about shearing sheep, but am curious about the tool.

[Moses Yoder]

Is it a shear or a knife? I know nothing about shearing sheep, but am curious about the tool.

This is what I got. A handpiece (one of the parts in the pic, to the left of the box) would be attached to a rotating shaft probably run by a small gasoline engine. The knives and combs (I don't know which is which) were also with the hand piece. I am communicating with a sheep shearing tool collector currently to get more info on it.

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[Matt Krusen]

Very cool tool and even better story! I stayed at a sheep farm in Scotland for a week once and helped shear a couple of their sheep. Its quite the adventure. Pretty neat but very laborious. I remember the wool that was deepest (closest to the skin) was incredibly thick and soft.

[Ryan Mooney]

Boy that's an oldie all right. Neat stuff.

The comb like things are used to help keep you from cutting into the skin and I think the knives in this case actually run on them (if they're like the ones I've seen - hard to tell for sure from the picture). Actually using something like this is indeed an art, and certainly not something I've mastered (or even tried on sheep, although have used vaguely similar tools on horses and dogs - they tend to be less aggressively sized than the sheep shearers).

[Jim Rimmer]

My grandfather sheared sheep in the 50s with manual shears before electricity was available at the barn. The didn't look anything like what you've got. His (and I've seen them in resale stores) looked like scissors on steroids. Triangular shaped blades with a spring at the base and sharp points. A skilled shearer could shear a sheep very quickly with them. A not-so-good shearer could leave a sheep with a lot of bloody nicks.

[Jerry Thompson]

My Dad's sears are hanging on my shop wall. They are hand operated and would take a lot of effort to use hour after hour. This is not even considering the physical labor of handling sheep.

[Dave Verstraete]

Moses
With that history, I think that I would take your Dad's shears and either 1: make a collage out of them in a picture frame and hang them in the shop or 2: weld them into a 3D prehistoric animal that would sit on my desk. I prefer the latter.

[dawn villaescusa]

Moses
With that history, I think that I would take your Dad's shears and either 1: make a collage out of them in a picture frame and hang them in the shop or 2: weld them into a 3D prehistoric animal that would sit on my desk. I prefer the latter.

I'd vote for a shadow box/picture frame montage that includes a snippet of the story as well as info about the tools themselves, maybe a photo of your dad.

[Mike Chance in Iowa]

I'd vote for a shadow box/picture frame montage that includes a snippet of the story as well as info about the tools themselves, maybe a photo of your dad.

... and you can't forget to add a few clumps of wool! It should be easy to obtain a bit from someone who either owns sheep or provides sheep shearing service or someone who spins wool.