What is Clipper Blade Sharpening ?

An easy way to pack Clipper Blades is to roll them up in padding before packing them in a card box. This is very quick and gives great protection.

We sharpen and return clipper blades in 24 Hours from when we receive them.

If you post your clipper blade on Monday, we will email when it arrives which could be Tuesday. If your clipper blade arrives on Tuesday then it will be returned on Wednesday and so could be back with you on Thursday.

– 90% of first 1st class post arrives next day but it is not a Guaranteed next day service.

– We post items 5 days per week from Monday to Friday.

It is very rare for items to be lost in the UK Post.

Very occasionally customers jiffy bags, envelopes and boxes have split open and arrive with us with some contents missing. (2 times in 2022)

– If your clipper blades can knock together the teeth can be damaged.
– Items posted Royal Mail Signed For have tracking for when delivered and are insured for up to £50.
– In 2022 no items sent by us are reported as missing though a few have arrived late.

Please do not sharpen your own clipper blades.

– Sharpening clipper blades is not like sharpening a knife which has 1 simple cutting edge.  Clipper blades have 2 cutting edges sliding past each other which must be in very close contact to cut fine hair.

– DIY sharpening on a flat stone rounds down the tips of your clipper blades, making the inside faces convex. When you put these convex faces together the cutting teeth are splayed apart and will not cut.

– As the inside faces of your clipper blade should be hollow (concave), a lot of metal must then be removed from these now Convex surfaces to restore them back to hollow (concave).

The cutting teeth of your clipper blades need to be in close contact to work well.

To achieve this we sharpen each clipper blade with a slight hollow so that the tips of each blade slightly point into each other. This gives very good contact between the cutting teeth so the blades will work well.

DIY sharpening on a flat stone rounds down the tips of your clipper blades making the face convex. When you put these convex blades together the cutting teeth are splayed apart and will not work.

Why not sharpen them Flat?
You might think a flat surface would be best, however DIY flat sharpening produces convex and not flat surfaces and professionally flat sharpened clipper blades can perform inconsistently. Practically a small hollow is more reliable.

Why Hollow?
If you put 2 concave (hollow) surfaces together the edges are touching and there is a gap in the middle. As the teeth are at the edges of your clipper blades then a small hollow does work well.
Conversely if you put 2 convex surfaces together the middle is touching and the gap is at the edge. If you sharpen your clipper blade like this then the teeth are splayed apart and your clipper blade will not work.

Sometimes you can buy new clipper blades or have them professionally sharpened and they don’t cut.

– This is from inaccurate sharpening rather than bluntness.
– Professionally sharpened clipper blades have hollow or concave inside faces to ensure the cutting teeth have good contact at the edges. However if the hollow is too deep (side to side) then this can leave a gap in the middle between the two blades, so the cutting teeth don’t meet and wont work well.



– The hollow being too deep is one problem but other inaccuracies can occur.
– At SL Service we check each blade we sharpen to ensure it has an accurate small hollow so we can have the confidence that our customers will get the best clipping performance. 😇

Yes we can successfully sharpen virtually any clipper blade no matter how old or rusty.
People often believe perfectly good clipper blades are faulty when actually they just aren’t properly sharpened.

– A clipper blade is worn out when the raised areas at the cutting teeth are worn too flat. When these are flat then the blade may stop cutting due to hair trapped between the blades.
– Often only the smaller cutter blade needs to have a raised area at the teeth to work properly and the larger comb blade can be flat.
– Very rusty blades need to be ripped down with aggressive sharpening to get to clean metal.
– The worst blades to sharpen are ones which have been DIY sharpened on sandpaper. DIY sharpening on sandpaper makes them very convex so a lot of metal has to be removed to make them hollow (concave) again.

Clipper blades heat up while clipping from friction as the blades are moving. Clipper blade sharpening has no real effect on how hot your clipper blades get but there are a few things you can do to reduce how hot your clipper blades get:
1) Oil your clipper blades (teeth, back & slide).
2) Use the clipper at a lower speed.
3) Reduce blade tension (horse clippers).
4) Swap to a spare set of clipper blades.
5) Fit a ceramic part in your clipper blade (A5 blades).
6) Accept that some heat is normal.

1) Oil Your Clipper Blades
There are 2 types of oil, liquid clipper oil and spray clipper oil. Oil should be applied in three places; to the front at the teeth, to the back edge of the moving blade and also to the slide on top of the cutter blade (if there is one).
– Spray clipper oil is cold when you spray it from the can which does cool the blades.
– Liquid oil is a better lubricant than spray oil as spray oil is very thin.
– Be careful not to get spray oil into horse clipper main head bearings as spray oil will dissolve the grease in bearings.

2) Use Clipper at a Lower Speed
The faster the blades are moving then the hotter they get. If you use a slower clipper, or use a lower power setting then the blades will not heat up as much.

3) Reduce Blade Tension
Horse clippers have a tension screw to adjust the blade tension and lighter tension will produce less heat.
On clipper blades with no tension screw you can reduce tension by loosening the tension spring. However as the blades wont cut with light tension its usually best to leave this alone.

4) Swap Your Clipper Blades
Most Professional groomers have multiple sets of clipper blades and if one set gets too hot they swap blades to let them cool.

5) Fit a Ceramic Clipper Blade
Ceramic clipper blades have one part of the blade which is ceramic rather than metal. Ceramic does not heat up as much as metal, so the clipper blade runs cooler.
Currently only normal width A5 blades and a few hair clipper blades have a ceramic part available.
We can fit a ceramic part to any normal width A5 blade for £2 extra during sharpening. See Ceramic Clipper Blade Sharpening.

6) Accept That Some Heat is Normal
While it may not be what you’d like, normally the blades dont actually heat up that much.
– The blades do loose heat as you run them through the the hair and normally don’t get too hot to use.
– However if the blades do get very hot they could burn the skin or melt any plastic parts, so please be sensible and if necessary stop clipping to let your blade cool down and re-oil them.