Bench shears are robust, lever-action cutting tools designed to sever sheet metal cleanly at the jeweller's workbench. Distinguished from ordinary hand snips by their greater mechanical advantage — achieved through longer handles, a fixed lower jaw, or a bench-mounted frame — they are capable of cutting precious-metal sheet stock typically between 0.5 mm and 2 mm in thickness, depending on the model and the hardness of the alloy. They are indispensable at the blank-preparation stage of fabrication, where speed and a straight or profiled cut edge matter more than the fine kerf of a saw.

Design and Variants

Two broad configurations are common in professional workshops. Hand-held bench shears resemble heavy aviation snips with compound-action handles; they are portable and suited to curved or irregular cuts. Bench-mounted lever shears — sometimes called guillotine shears or bench guillotines — fix to the edge of the workbench and use a long handle to drive a hardened steel blade past a stationary lower blade, producing a straight cut with minimal operator effort. Both types are available with straight blades for rectilinear cuts and with offset or curved blades for cutting arcs and shaped blanks.

Blade material is typically hardened tool steel, and the cutting edges are set with a slight overlap (shear angle) to draw the metal through progressively rather than punching it, which reduces distortion along the cut edge. Quality models allow blade-gap adjustment to compensate for wear and to suit different metal gauges.

Materials and Gauge Capacity

In a jewellery context, bench shears are used primarily on fine silver, sterling silver, gold alloys (yellow, white, and rose), platinum-group metals, and base-metal test or model stock such as copper and brass. Annealed sheet cuts most easily; work-hardened or half-hard sheet requires more force and may cause slight burring along the cut edge. Practical gauge capacity for a good-quality bench-mounted shear is approximately 18 B&S gauge (approximately 1 mm) in sterling silver and somewhat less in harder white-gold alloys. Platinum sheet, being both hard and springy, is generally cut at lighter gauges or reserved for saw cutting to avoid edge distortion.

Use in the Workshop

Bench shears are most commonly employed for rough sizing — reducing a larger sheet to a workable piece before further marking, sawing, or forming. They are also used to cut strip stock for bezel wire, binding wire, and solder pallions, and to produce simple geometric blanks such as discs, rectangles, and triangles that will subsequently be refined by filing or rolling. Because shearing displaces rather than removes metal, the cut edge typically shows slight compression and may require filing or draw-filing to restore a clean, square profile before soldering or forming.

Curved-blade or aviation-pattern shears are preferred when cutting sheet along a drawn curve, though tight radii are better achieved with a jeweller's saw. For very thin foil or solder sheet, ordinary scissors or dedicated solder shears are often more controllable than full bench shears.

Maintenance

Blade alignment and gap are the critical maintenance points. A gap that is too wide produces a ragged, torn edge; blades that are too tightly set bind and accelerate wear. Pivot bolts should be kept snug but not over-tightened, and blade faces should be kept clean and lightly oiled to prevent corrosion and reduce friction. Resharpening is possible on quality tools but requires maintaining the correct bevel angle and shear geometry, and is generally undertaken by a specialist tool grinder rather than in the workshop.