The Pinking Shears: A Zigzag in One Stroke

"My invention relates to method of and means for pinking cloth, silk, oiled fabrics, paper, leather, and other materials; and its object is to provide a hand implement wherewith the pinking can be done very rapidly by a continuous cutting operation, similar to that of cutting fabrics with ordinary scissors or shears." The blades are "made much thicker than in ordinary scissors or shears, and provided with male and female matching projections and depressions of any desired configuration on their inner broad faces, the projections and depressions running transversely to the length of the blades". "With my improved pinking scissors or shears, the pinking or scalloping can always be made uniform and in line; and it is performed by cutting continuously through the fabric from end to end or edge to edge; thus the work is very rapidly done, and, where the fabric is severed, two scalloped edges will be produced at the same operation."

Cut four strips of the same cotton fabric along the weave: two with ordinary fabric scissors and two with pinking shears. Measure each strip's width with the ruler. Wash all four together in warm water, rub them, and let them dry. Look at the edges under the loupe, measure the longest loose thread on each edge, and measure the widths again. Note how much each edge lost, and compare with the notebook.

**Louise Austin** of Whatcom, Washington, filed US 489,406 on 16 June 1892; it is dated 3 January 1893. She contrasts her shears with pinking irons, which are slow, and with pinking cutters that must be held still at right angles to the edge. **Honest limits.** The notebook's geometry assumes 90-degree teeth cut along the weave and counts a thread as loose only where it lies inside the cut; real fraying also depends on the weave, the fibre and the washing. Pitch and thread count are examples. Your measured loose threads are the measurement.